im^L ^t ttw ®fte»loffta|^^ *"%, 4ivw*^^ ** PRINCETON, N. J. BS 2410 .H3813 1895 Vr4 Hausrath, Adolf, 1837-1909 A history of the New Testament times She// THE TIME OF THE APOSTLES. VOL. IV. A HISTOEY NEW TESTAMENT TIMES. DR A. HAUSRATH, ORDINARY PROFESSOR OF THEOLOCSY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG. THE TIME OF THE APOSTLES. VOL. IV. TRANSLATED, WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION, FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION, BY L. HUXLEY, B.A. With a -Preface by Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGfH ; AND 7, BROAD STREET, OXFORD. 1895. lOKDON : PKIKTED BY C. GRKKN AND SON, 178. STEAND. CONTENTS. Activity among the Greeks {continued). 3 4. Disturbances at Corinth 28 5. The First Epistle to the Corinthians ... 42 6. The Struggle over the Apostolate . 55 7. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians . Jiftlj §ibisiou. Nero. t6 1. The New Regime .... 2. The Situation in Judcea . • 89 3. Paul in Judiea . • • .105 4. Christian Persecution in -Tudaea . • 127 ^i«tlj ^ibision. Paul in Rome. 139 1. The Apostle's Journey 9 • l^^ The Jews in Rome . • • 3. The Roman Christians . • .156 4. Persecution of the Christians under Nero . 168 • 5. The End of Nero . • • .177 VIU CONTENTS. The Jewish War. PAGE 1. The First Insurrection . .187 2. Annas and Josephus ..... 200 3. The War in GaUlee . , . .212 4. The Fall of Jerusalem . 228 5. History of the Christians during the Jewish War . 246 6. The Apocalypse . 256 Index ....... 283 Jfourllj §Wxmn, ACTIVITY AMONG THE GEEEKS. (continued.) ACTIVITY AMONG THE GREEKS. (continued.) 4. Disturbances at Corinth. Paul had quitted Corinth at a moment when a great civic and political revolution loosened every tie, while the intensifi- cation of the general expectancy urged religious excitement yet higher. A long-looked-for change of government had taken place. In October, 54, a physician, skilled in poisonous drugs, aided Agrippina to remove Claudius in favour of Nero, now seventeen years of age. The magnitude of the crisis explains the intensity of apocalyptic feeling prevailing in the churches of Macedonia and Achaia. It may even account in part for the rapidity with which Paul's preaching of the approaching day of judgment penetrated Achaia. For since the beginning of the year 54 A.D., the Homan world lay in fearful expectancy. Gone were the hopeful times in which the accession even of a Caligula was greeted with confident acclamation. The heralds of Nero's reign were hideous portents and universal depression. We have seen in Thessalonica the form taken by this univer- sal excitement in the little Christian circles. The same must have been the case in Corinth. The only class in a comfortable frame of mind were the God-forsaken Koman aristocracy, for whom the hour of judgment had actually come. Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia, said mockingly that Claudius' elevation to Olympus was now effected with a hook;^ while his brother Seneca seized the opportunity to ridicule the apotheosis of the Csesars, giving a minute description of the translation of the 1 Dio Cass. Ix. 35. b2 ; 4 ACTIVITY AMONG THE GREEKS. wretched Claudius, who had been poisoned with a pumpkin. It was an apocolocynthosis, not an apotheosis pumpkinification, ; not deification ; and the reception in Olympus was depicted agreeably to this introduction. This was the moment, nearly a year after the accession of the new emperor, when Paul left Corinth. A personality such as his is not merely of importance when actually engaged in affairs the clearest measure of his influence is the gap made by his absence. So it was here. The mere fact of Paul's departure from Corinth at a time of such excitement had special draw- backs for the church, whose members almost immediately passed into a state of exaltation. In addition, the founders of the church one and all went their way, and the church found itself deserted. With Paul and Aquila went Silas and Timothy, if they had not gone already to Macedonia, where we repeatedly meet with them. The Corinthians, therefore, made repeated and urgent demands for the return of Paul, who continually puts them off with pro- mises for the future.^ Instead of him, there came, unfortunately for all concerned, a succession of strange teachers, attracted by the reputation of Corinth, that " epistle known and read of all men."^ First came the Alexandrian Apollos, soon followed by men of Palestine, some with great respect for Peter, others proud in the consciousness of having known Jesus Christ in person. Before long, a whole series of itinerant teachers had entered the church, either in transit or to stay. All claimed to wield authority over the church.^ " Many teachers, much strife," were the words of Hillel the elder ; and in Corinth, at all events, his words came true. Paul had no cause to rejoice in the thousand and one instructors who assumed an interest in his children.* He warns every man that built wood, hay or stubble, on this foundation, which he himself had laid as a wise master-builder, to consider how much of all they so busily erected would survive 1 2 Cor. i. 17. 2 2 Cor. iii. 2. ' 1 Cor. ix. 12. * 1 Cor. iv. 15, DISTURBAXCES AT COEIXTH. 5 the flames on the Jay of the Lord ; nay, they themselves, he declares, shall be saved with difficulty, and only as by fire.^ For his own part, while working in Corinth, he had stooped lovingly to the level of the members of the church, who, in their labours in the warehouses of the city or the wharves of Schoenus, needed other things than the hair-splitting of the Jewish or the lofty speculations of the Greek schools. " I could not speak unto you," he says, "as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto baljes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it." But those that came after him were men of a very different stamp. They were skilled to express the subtleties of the Eabbis and the philosophizings of the latest science of religion, and the average man is usually most impressed by what he only half understands. The great danger in the continual introduction of new views, new conceptions, new attitudes of mind, was that the congregations might become estranged from the true end of edification, and turn into an arena of rhetorical exercises and scholastic disputations, transforming Christian activity from a life of love to endless talk. In Corinth, indeed, this danger was greater than elsewhere, for the true Greek found talking the greatest pleasure in life.^ But besides this, another bad habit of Hellenism, the inclina- tion to factious partizanship, could not fail to find all too plenti- ful material in the confluence of so many foreign teachers. To enjoy several masters is not granted to the Greek ; he must love one and hate the others ; he would not believe in the sincerity of his love if he were not a partizan of the object of his preference, seeking to overthrow all his rivals. Thus strife and wrangling entered the church, often to turn shamelessly against the Apostle. At this juncture it is very possible that " Paul dismisses a vexed question with the words : If any man be * 1 Cor. iii. 15. 2 Jos. Bell. Prooem. 5. Similarly, Cicero, Pro Flacco, 4, 5. ; 6 ACTIVITY AMONG THE GREEKS. ignorant, let him be ignorant ;" or, " If any man seem to be con- tentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God."^ Thus we see a troubled time of discord following soon vipon the times of early love. The impulse gi-ew weaker ; the powers of the natural man began to stir again. For all that springs from enthusiasm first foams up for a while and then gi^ows turbid ; it is long before returning clearness decides the value of the first seething and ferment. So it was here. Through the supremacy of genius over smaller minds, Paul had at Corinth brought a number of persons under the law and norm of his religious thought ; he had snatched them from their ancient connection with the venerable synagogue, or the more cheerful worship of the Greek temple ; he had taken them from the bustling life of a great city to the quiet of a private house after setting enmity, according to the Lord's saying, between members of a household—between father and son, mother and daughter, the wife and her mother-in-law^—he had gone away, and consoled them in their isolation by leaving them a book, a gospel, and the hope of a coming kingdom. Such is the unpity- ing sternness of universal history, which does not inquire into the minor interests of heart and home. But individuals do inquire into them. It is not astonishing, therefore, that after the Apostle's departure many were in perplexity over the reason of their being brought out of Egypt, and began to murmur over the chimerical dreams with which they had been deluded.^ Indeed, the position of this little band was difficult enough. A vivid picture of their life confronts us in the pages of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. There are slaves doubly oppressed by their chains since hearing of the Christian's freedom, since the opening of their eyes to see the foulness of Gentile domestic ^ 1 Cor. xiv. 38, xi. 16. Pointedly also in Cicero: Grsccus testis cxxm ea volimtate prucedit, ut la'dat .... Vinci, refelli, coargui putat esse turpissi- mum.