Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Paul (1.)

Author:Paul of Tarsus

AUL, who is also (called) Paul,&rdquo; was a &ldquo;Hebrew of the Hebrews,&rdquo; i.e., of pure Jewish descent unmixed with Gentile blood, of the tribe of Benjamin (Rom. xi. 1; 2 Cor. xi. 22; Phil. iii. 5). In the Acts of the Apostles it is stated that he was born at Tarsus in Cilicia (ix. 11, xxi. 39, xxii. 3); but in the 4th century there still lingered a tradition that his birthplace was Giscala, the last of the fortress-towns of Galilee which held out against Rome (Jerome, De vir. illustr. c. 5; Ad

Philem. v. 23). The fact that he was called by two names a has been accounted for in various ways. Saul (the Aramaic form, used only as a vocative, and in the narratives of his conversion, Acts ix. 4, 17, xxii. 7, 13, xxvi. 14; elsewhere the Hellenized form, Σαῦλος) was a natural name for a Benjamite to give to his son, in memory of the first of Jewish kings; Paul is more difficult of explanation. It is first found in the narrative of the conversion of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus (Acts xiii. 9), and it has sometimes been supposed either that Paul himself adopted the name in compliment to his first Gentile convert of distinction (Jerome, Olshausen, Meyer, Ewald), or that the writer of the Acts intended to imply that it was so adopted (Baur, Zeller, Hausrath). Others have thought that it was assumed by Paul himself after the beginning of his ministry, and that it is derived from the Latin paulus in the sense either of &ldquo;least among the apostles&rdquo; (St Augustine) or &ldquo;little of stature&rdquo; (Mangold, with reference to 2 Cor. x. 10; Gal. iv. 13). But these and many similar conjectures may probably be set aside in favour of the supposition that he had a double name from the first, one Aramaic or Hebrew and the other Latin or Greek, like Simon Peter, John Mark, Simeon Niger, Joseph Justus; this supposition is confirmed by the fact that Paul was not an uncommon name in Syria and the eastern parts of Asia Minor (instances will be found in the Index Nominum to Boeckh's ''Corp. Inscr. Græc.''). Whatever be its origin, Paul is the only name which he himself uses of himself, or which is used of him by others when once he had entered into the Roman world outside Palestine. The Acts speak of his having been a Roman citizen by birth (xxii. 28; cf. xvi. 17, xxiii. 27), a statement which also has given rise to several conjectures, because there is no clue to the ground upon which his claim to citizenship was based. Some modern writers question the fact, consider ing the statement to be part of the general colouring which the writer of the Acts is supposed to give to his narrative; and some also question the fact, which is generally

considered to support it, of the appeal to the emperor. That he received part of his education at Tarsus, which was a

great seat of learning, is a possible inference from his use of some of the technical terms which were current in the Greek schools of rhetoric and philosophy; but, since the cultivation of a correct grammatical and rhetorical style was one of the chief studies of those schools, Paul's imperfect command of Greek syntax seems to show that this education did not go very far. That he received the main part of his education from Jewish sources is not only probable from the fact that his family were Pharisees, but certain from the whole tone and character of his writings. According to the Acts, his teacher was Gamaliel, who as the grandson of Hillel took a natural place as the head of the moderate school of Jewish theologians; nor, in spite of the objection that the fanaticism of the disciple was at variance with the moderation of the master, does the statement seem in itself improbable. A more important difficulty in the way of accepting the statement that Jerusalem was the place of his education is the fact that in that case his education must have been going on at the time of the preaching and death of Jesus Christ. That he had not seen Jesus Christ during His ministry seems to be clear, for a comparison of 1 Cor. ix. 1 with xv. 8 appears to limit his sight of Christ to that which he had at his conversion, and the &ldquo;knowing Christ after the flesh&rdquo; of 2 Cor. v. 16 is used not of personal acquaintance but of &ldquo;carnal&rdquo; as opposed to &ldquo;spiritual&rdquo; understanding; nor does the difficulty seem to be altogether adequately explained away by the hypothesis which some writers (e.g., Neander, Wieseler, Beyschlag) have adopted, that he was temporarily absent from Jerusalem at the times when Jesus Christ was there. Like all Jewish boys, he learnt a trade, that of tent-making; this was a natural employment for one of Cilician origin, since the hair of the Cilician goat was used to make a canvas (cilicia) which was specially adapted for the tents used by travellers on the great routes of commerce or by soldiers on their campaigns (cf. Philo, De anim. sacrif. idon., i. vol. ii. p. 238, ed. Mang.). Whether he was married or not is a question which has been disputed from very early times; his expressions in 1 Cor. vii. 8, ix. 5, were taken by Tertullian to imply that he was not, and by Clement of Alexandria and Origen to imply that he had once been, but that he had become a widower.

The beginning of his active life was doubtless like its maturity; it was charged with emotion. He himself gives a graphic sketch of its inner history. His conversion to Christianity was not the first great change that he had undergone. &ldquo;I was alive without the law once&rdquo; (Rom. vii. 9). He had lived in his youth a pure and guileless life. He had felt that which is at once the charm and the force of such a life, the unconsciousness of wrong. But,

while his fellow-disciples in the rabbinical schools had been content to dissect the text of the sacred code with a minute anatomy, the vision of a law of God which transcended both text and comment had loomed upon him like a new revelation. And with the sense of law had come the sense of sin. It was like the first dawn of conscience. He awoke as from a dream. &ldquo;The commandment came.&rdquo; It was intended to be &ldquo;unto life,&rdquo; but he found it to be &ldquo;unto death&rdquo;; for it opened up to him infinite possibilities of sinning: &ldquo;I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust.&rdquo; And the possibilities of sinning became lures which drew him on to forbidden and hated ground: &ldquo;sin, finding occasion through the commandment, beguiled me and through it slew me&rdquo; (Rom. vii. 7-11). This was his inner life, and no man has ever analysed it with a more penetrating and graphic power. In his outward life this sense of the law of God became to him an overpowering stimulus. The stronger the consciousness of his personal failure the greater the impulse of his zeal. The vindication of the honour of God by persecuting heretics, which was an obligation upon all pious Jews, was for him a supreme duty. He became not only a persecutor but a leader among persecutors (Gal. i. 14). What he felt was a very frenzy of hate; he &ldquo;breathed threatening and slaughter,&rdquo; like the snorting of a war-horse before a battle, against the renegade Jews who believed in a false Messiah (Acts ix. 1, xxvi. 11). His enthusiasm had been known before the popular outbreak which led to Stephen's death, for the witnesses to the martyr's stoning &ldquo;laid down their clothes&rdquo; at his feet (Acts vii. 58), and he took a prominent place in the persecution which followed. He himself speaks of having &ldquo;made havoc&rdquo; of the community at Jerusalem, spoiling it like a captured city (Gal. i. 13, 23); in the more detailed account of the Acts he went from house to house to search out and drag forth to punishment the adherents of the new heresy (viii. 3). When his victims came before the Jewish courts he tried, probably by scourging, to force them to apostatize (xxvi. 11); in some cases he voted for their death (xxii. 4, xxvi. 10). The persecution spread from Jerusalem to Judaea and Galilee (ix. 31); but Paul, with the same spirit of enterprise which afterwards showed itself in his missionary journeys, was not content with the limits of Palestine. He sought and obtained from the ecclesiastical authorities at Jerusalem letters similar to those which, in the 13th century, the popes gave to the &ldquo;militia Jesu Christi contra hæreticos.&rdquo; The ordinary jurisdiction of the synagogues was for the time set aside; the special commissioner was empowered to take as prisoners to Jerusalem any whom he found to belong to the sect known as &ldquo;The Way&rdquo; (Acts ix. 2, xxii. 4, xxiv. 14; it is possible that the phrase was used of Christians by themselves, like the phrase &ldquo;The Cause&rdquo; among some of the nonconforming churches of England). Of the great cities which lay near Palestine Damascus was the most promising, if not the only field for such a commission. At Antioch and at Alexandria, though the Jews, who were very numerous, enjoyed a large amount of independence and had their own governor, the Roman authorities would probably have interfered to prevent the extreme measures which Paul demanded. At Damascus, where also the Jews were numerous and possibly had their own civil governor (2 Cor. xi. 32), the Arabian prince Aretas (Haritha), who then held the city, might naturally be disposed to let an influential section of the population deal as they pleased with their refractory members.

On Paul's way thither an event occurred which has proved to be of transcendent importance for the religious history of mankind. He became a Christian by what he believed to be the personal revelation of Jesus Christ.

His own accounts of the event are brief, but they are at the same time emphatic and uniform. &ldquo;It pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me&rdquo; (Gal. i. 16); &ldquo;have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord&rdquo; (1 Cor. ix. 1); &ldquo;last of all He was seen of me also as of one born out of due time&rdquo; (1 Cor. xv. 8, where ὤφθη κἀμοί must be read in the sense of the parallel expressions ὤφθη Κηφᾷ, &c.; in other words, Paul puts the appearance to himself on a level with the appearances to the apostles after the resurrection). These accounts give no details of the circumstances. St Paul's estimate of the importance of such details was probably different from that which has been attached to them in later times. The accounts in the Acts of the Apostles are more elaborate; they are three in number, one in the continuous narrative, ix. 3-19, a second in the address on the temple stairs, xxii. 6-21, a third in the speech to Agrippa, xxvi. 12-18; they all differ from each other in details, they all agree in substance; the differences are fatal to the stricter theories of verbal inspiration, but they do not constitute a valid argument against the general truth of the narrative.

It is natural to find that the accounts of an event which lies so far outside the ordinary experience of men have been the object of much hostile criticism. The earliest denial of its reality is found in the Judaeo- Christian writings known as the Clementine Homilies, where Simon Magus, who is made to be a caricature of Paul, is told that visions and dreams may come from demons as well as from God (Clem. Hom., xvii. 13-19). The most important of later denials are those of the Tübingen school, which explain the narratives in the Acts either as a translation into the language of historical fact of the figurative expressions of the manifestation of Christ to the soul, and the consequent change from spiritual darkness to light (e.g., Baur, Paul, E.T., vol. i. p. 76; Zeller, Acts, E.T., vol. i. p. 289), or as an ecstatic vision (Holsten, Das Evangelium des Paulus, p. 65). But against all the difficulties and apparent incredibilities of the narratives there stand out the clear and indisputable facts that the persecutor was suddenly transformed into a believer, and that to his dying day he never ceased to believe and to preach that he had &ldquo;seen Jesus Christ.&rdquo;

Nor was it only that he had seen Him; the gospel which he preached, as well as the call to preach it, was due to this revelation. It had &ldquo;pleased God to reveal His Son in him&rdquo; that he "might preach Him among the Gentiles" (Gal. i. 12, 16). He had received the special mark of God's favour, which consisted in his apostleship, that all nations might obey and believe the gospel (Rom. i. 5, cf. xii. 3, xv. 15, 16). He had been entrusted with a secret (μυστήριον) which had &ldquo;been kept in silence through times eternal,&rdquo; but which it was now his special office to make known (Rom. xi. 25, xvi. 25, 26; and even more prominently in the later epistles, Eph. i. 9, iii. 2-9, vi. 19; Col. i. 26, 27, iv. 3). This secret was that &ldquo;the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.&rdquo; This is the key to all his subsequent history. He was the &ldquo;apostle of the Gentiles,&rdquo; and that &ldquo;not from men, neither through man&rdquo; (Gal. i. 1); and so thoroughly was the conviction of his special mission wrought into the fibres of his nature that it is difficult to give full credence to statements which appear to be at variance with it.

Of his life immediately after his conversion he himself

gives a clear account: &ldquo;I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia&rdquo; (Gal. i. 16, 17). The reason of his retirement, whether it was to the Haurán (Renan) or to the Sinaitic peninsula (Holsten), is not far to seek. A great mental no less than a great bodily convulsion naturally calls for a period of rest; and the consequences of his new position had to be drawn out and realized before he could properly enter upon the mission-work which lay before him. From

Arabia he returned to Damascus (Gal. i. 17), and there began not only his preaching of the gospel but also the long series of &ldquo;perils from his own countrymen,&rdquo; which constitute so large a part of the circumstances of his subsequent history (Acts ix. 23-25; 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33).

It was not until &ldquo;after three years,&rdquo; though it is uncertain whether the reckoning begins from his conversion or from his return to Damascus, that he went up to Jerusalem; his purpose in going was to become acquainted with Peter, and he stayed with him fifteen days (Gal. i. 18). Of his life at Jerusalem on this occasion there appear to have been erroneous accounts current even in his own lifetime, for he adds the emphatic attestation, as of a witness on his oath, that the account which he gives is true (Gal. i. 20). The point on which he seems to lay emphasis is that, in pursuance of his policy not to &ldquo;confer with flesh and blood,&rdquo; he saw none of the apostles except Peter and James, and that even some years afterwards he was still unknown by face to the churches of Judaea which were in Christ.

From Jerusalem he went &ldquo;into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,&rdquo; preaching the gospel (Gal. i. 21, 23). How much that brief expression covers is uncertain; it may refer only to the first few months after his departure from Jerusalem, or it may be a summary of many travels, of which that which is commonly known as his &ldquo;first missionary journey&rdquo; is a type. The form of expression in Gal. ii. 1 makes it probable that he purposely leaves an interval between the events which immediately succeeded his conversion and the conference at Jerusalem. For this interval, assuming it to exist, or in any case for the detail of its history, we have to depend on the accounts in Acts xi. 20-30, xii. 25 to xiv. 28. These accounts possibly cover only a small part of the whole period, and they are so limited to Paul's relations with Barnabas as to make it probable that they were derived from a lost &ldquo;Acts of Barnabas.&rdquo; This supposition would probably account for the fact that in them the conversion of the Gentiles is to a great extent in the background.

The chief features of these accounts are the formation of a new centre of Christian life at Antioch, and a journey which Paul, Barnabas, and for part of the way John Mark took through Cyprus and Asia Minor.

The first of these facts has a significance which has sometimes been overlooked for the history not only of Paul himself but of Christianity in general. It is that the mingling together, in that splendid capital of the civilized East, of Jews and Syrians on the one hand with Greeks and Romans on the other furnished the conditions which made a Gentile Christianity possible. The religion of Jesus Christ emerged from its obscurity into the full glare of contemporary life. Its adherents attracted enough attention to receive in the common talk and intercourse of men a distinctive name. They were treated, not as a Jewish sect, but as a political party. To the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew &ldquo;Messiah,&rdquo; which was probably considered to be not a title but a proper name, was added the

termination which had been employed for the followers of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Cæsar. It is improbable that this would have been the case unless the Christian community at Antioch had had a large Gentile element; and it is an even more certain and more important fact that in this first great mixed community the first and greatest of all the problems of early Christian communities had been solved, and that Jews and Gentiles lived a common life (Gal. ii. 12). What place Paul himself had in the formation of this community can only be conjectured. In the Acts he is less prominent than Barnabas; and, although it must be gathered from the Epistle to the Galatians that he took a leading part in the controversies which arose, still it is to be noted that he never elsewhere mentions Antioch in his epistles, and that he never visited it except casually in his travels. It may be supposed that from an early period he sought and found a wider field for his activity. The spirit of the Pharisees who &ldquo;compassed sea and land to make one proselyte&rdquo; was still strong within him. The zeal for God which had made him a persecutor had changed its direction but not its force. His conversion was but an overpowering call to a new sphere of work. It is consequently difficult to believe that he was content to take his place as merely one of a band of teachers elected by the community or appointed by the Twelve. The sense of a special mission never passed away from him. &ldquo;Necessity was laid upon him&rdquo; (1 Cor. ix. 16). Inferior to the Twelve in regard to the fact that he had once &ldquo;persecuted the church of God,&rdquo; he was &ldquo;not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles&rdquo; (2 Cor. xi. 5) in regard both to the reality and the privileges of his commission, and to the truth of what he preached (1 Cor. ix. 3-6; 2 Cor. iii. 1-6; Gal. i. 12). It is also difficult to believe that he went out with Barnabas simply as the delegate of the Antiochean community; whatever significance the laying on of hands may have had for him (Acts xiii. 3), it would be contrary to the tenor of all his writings to suppose that he regarded it as giving him his commission to preach the gospel.

The narrative of the incidents of the single journey which is recorded in detail, and which possibly did not occupy more than one summer, has given rise to much controversy. Its general credibility is supported by the probability that in the first instance Paul would follow an ordinary commercial route, on which Jewish missionaries as well as Jewish merchants had been his pioneers. For his letters to his Gentile converts all presuppose their acquaintance with the elements of Judaism. They do not prove monotheism, but assume it.

According to the narrative, Paul and his companions went first to Cyprus, the native country of Barnabas, and travelled through the island from its eastern port, Salamis, to its capital, Paphos. At Paphos a Jewish sorcerer, Bar Jesus, was struck with blindness, and the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, was converted. From Cyprus, still following a common route of trade, they went into the south-east districts of Asia Minor, through Pamphylia to Antioch in Pisidia. At Antioch, on two successive Sabbaths, Paul spoke in the synagogue; the genuineness of the addresses which are recorded in the Acts has been disputed, chiefly because the second of them seems to imply that he &ldquo;turned to the Gentiles,&rdquo; not as a primary and unconditional obligation, but owing to the rejection of the gospel by the Jews. Expelled from Antioch, they went on to Iconium (where the apocryphal &ldquo;Acts of Paul and Thekla&rdquo; place the scene of that improbable but not ungraceful romance), and thence to Lystra, where the healing of a cripple caused the simple and superstitious Lycaonians to take them for gods. Their farthest point was the neighbouring town of Derbe, from whence they returned by the route

by which they had come to the sea-coast, and thence to Antioch in Syria.

But, although the general features of the narrative may be accepted as true, especially if, as suggested above, its basis is a memoir or itinerary not of Paul but of Barnabas, yet it must be conceded that this portion of the Acts has large omissions. It is difficult to believe that the passionate zeal of an apostle who was urged by the stimulus of a special call of Jesus Christ was satisfied, for the long period of at least eleven years, with one short missionary journey, and that, with the exception of a brief visit to Jerusalem (Acts xi. 30), he remained quietly at Tarsus or at Antioch (xi. 25, xiii. 1, xiv. 28). In this period must fall at least a portion of the experiences which he records in 2 Cor. xi. 24-27, and for which no place can be found in the interval between the conference at Jerusalem and the writing of that epistle. The scourging in the synagogues, the beating with the lictor's rods in the Roman courts, the shipwrecks, the &ldquo;night and day in the deep,&rdquo; the &ldquo;perils of robbers,&rdquo; and &ldquo;perils in the wilderness&rdquo; belong no doubt to some of the unrecorded journeys of these first years of his apostolic life. A more important omission is that of some of the more distinctive features of his preaching. It is impossible to account for his attitude towards the original apostles in his interview with them at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 1-10) except on the supposition that before that interview, no less than after it, he was that which he had been specially called to be, the &ldquo;apostle of the Gentiles&rdquo; and the preacher of the &ldquo;gospel of the uncircumcision.&rdquo;

At the end of fourteen years, either from his conversion or from his visit to Peter at Jerusalem, the question of the relation of the communities which he had formed, and of the gospel which he preached, to the original Christian communities, and to the gospel of the Twelve, came to a crisis. His position was unique. He owed neither his knowledge of the gospel nor his commission to preach it to any human authority (Gal. i. 1, 11, 12). As Jesus Christ had taught and sent forth the Twelve, so had He taught and sent forth Paul. He was on equal terms with the Twelve. Until a revelation came to him he was apparently at no pains to co-operate with them. But between their respective disciples there was evidently a sharp contention. The Jewish party, the original disciples and first converts, maintained the continued obligation of the Mosaic law and the limitation of the promises to those who observed it; the Pauline party asserted the abrogation of the law and the free justification of all who believed in Jesus Christ. The controversy narrowed itself to the one point of circumcision. If the Gentiles were without circumcision members of the kingdom of God, why was the law obligatory on the Jews? If, on the other hand, the Gentiles had to be circumcised, the gospel had but a secondary importance. It seemed for a time as though Christianity would be broken up into two sharply-divided sects, and that between the Jewish Christianity, which had its seat at Jerusalem, and which insisted on circumcision, and the Gentile Christianity, which had its seat at Antioch, and which rejected circumcision, there would be an irreconcilable antagonism. It was consequently &ldquo;by revelation&rdquo; (Gal. ii. 2) that Paul and Barnabas, with the Gentile convert Titus as their &ldquo;minister&rdquo; or secretary, went to confer with the leaders among the original disciples, the &ldquo;pillars&rdquo; or &ldquo;them who were of repute,&rdquo; &ldquo;James, and Cephas, and John.&rdquo; He put the question to them: Was it possible that he was spending or had spent his labour in vain? (μήπως . . . ἔδραμον in Gal. ii. 2 form a direct question depending on ἀνεθέμην). He laid before them the &ldquo;gospel of the uncircumcision.&rdquo; They made no addition to it (Paul says of himself ἀνεθέμην, and of &ldquo;them who were of

οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο, Gal. ii. 2, 6), but accepted it as Paul preached it, recognizing it as being a special work of God, and as being on the same level of authority with their own (Gal. ii. 7-9). The opposition was no doubt strong; there were &ldquo;false brethren&rdquo; who refused to emancipate the Gentile world from the bondage of the law and there was also apparently a party of compromise which, admitting Paul's general contention, maintained the necessity of circumcision in certain cases, of which the case of Titus, for reasons which are no longer apparent, was typical. But Paul would have no compromise. From his point of view compromise was impossible. &ldquo;Justification&rdquo; was either &ldquo;of faith&rdquo; or &ldquo;by the works of the law&rdquo;; it was inconceivable that it could be partly by the one and partly by the other. And he succeeded in maintaining his position at all points. He received &ldquo;the right hand of fellowship,&rdquo; and went back to Antioch the recognized head and preacher of the &ldquo;gospel of the uncircumcision.&rdquo; With in his own sphere he had perfect freedom of action; the only tie between his converts and the original community at Jerusalem was the tie of benevolence. Jew and Gentile were so far &ldquo;one body in Christ&rdquo; that the wealthier Gentile communities should &ldquo;remember the poor.&rdquo; Few passages of the New Testament have been more keenly

debated of late years than the accounts of this conference at Jerusalem in Acts xv. 4-29 and Gal. ii. 1-10. The only writers of eminence in recent times who think that the two accounts refer to separate events are Caspari, who identifies the visit to Jerusalem mentioned in Gal. ii. 1-10 with that of Acts xi. 30, xii. 25, and Wieseler, who identifies it with that of Acts xviii. 21, 22; both theories are chronologically impossible. Almost all writers agree in thinking that the two accounts refer to the same event, but no two writers precisely agree as to the extent to which they can be reconciled. (1) The differences between them were first insisted on by Schwegler, Das nachapostolische Zeitalter, 1845, vol. i. 116; then by Zeller, Die Apostelgeschichte, E.T., vol. ii. 8; Baur, Paulus, E.T., vol. i. 109; Hilgenfeld, Der Galaterbrief, 1852, p. 52, and in his Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1875, p. 227, &amp;c.; Krenkel, Paulus, 1869, p. 62; Lipsius, s.v. &ldquo; Apostelkonvent,&rdquo; in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon, 1868, vol. i. 194; Overbeck, in his edition of De Wette's Apostelgeschichte, 1870, p. 216; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, 1873, E.T., vol. ii. 5 and 234, and also in his &ldquo;Paulinische Studien,&rdquo; in the ''Jahrb. f. prot. Theol.'', 1883, No. 2; Weizsäcker, in the ''Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol.'', 1873, p. 191; Hausrath, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 2d ed. , vol. iii. 151, vol. iv. 249; Holsten, Zum Evangelium des Paulus und Petrus, pp. 241, 292, Das Evangelium des Paulus, p. 143; Holtzmann, &ldquo;Der Apostelconvent,&rdquo; in Hilgenfeld's ''Zeitschr. f, wissensch. Theol.'', 1882 p. 436, 1883 p. 129 (to which articles the writer is indebted for several of the references here given). (2) The harmony of the two accounts is maintained, mostly in opposition to the above-named writers, by Neander, ''Gesch. d. Pflanzung, 5th ed., 1862, p. 158; Ewald, Gesch.'' d. Volkes Israel, 3d ed., 1868, vol. vi. 470; Ritschl, ''Ent. d. altkath.'' Kirche, 2d ed., 1857, p. 128; Lechler, ''Das apostol. u. nachapostol.'' Zeitalter, 2d ed., 1857, p. 397; Baumgarten, Die Apostelgeschichte, 2d ed., 1859, i. 461; Pressensé, ''Hist. des trois premiers siècles'', 2d ed., 1868, vol. i. 457; Weiss, ''Lehrb. d. bib. Theol.'' (des N.T.), 2d ed., 1873, p. 141; Schenkel, Das Christusbild der Apostel, 1879, p. 38; K. Schmidt, s.v. &ldquo;Apostel-Konvent,&rdquo; in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie, 2d ed., vol. i. 575; Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 123; Wendt, in his edition of Meyer's Apostelgesch., 1880, p. 311; Sieffert, in Meyer's Brief an die Galater, 1880, p. 84, &amp;c.; Zimmer, Galaterbrief und Apostelgeschichte, 1882; Nösgen, ''Comm. über die Apostelgeschichte'', 1882, p. 287. (3) A compromise between the two accounts is attempted by Renan, St Paul, 1869, p. 81; Reuss, ''Die Gesch. d. heil. Schr.,'' N.T., 5th ed., 1874, p. 57; Keim, &ldquo;Der Apostelconvent,&rdquo; in his Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878, p. 64; Grimm, &ldquo;Der Apostelconvent,&rdquo; in Studien u. Kritiken for 1880, p. 405.

The main points of difficulty in the two accounts are these. (1) The Acts say that Paul went up by appointment of the brethren at Antioch; Paul himself says that he went up &ldquo;by revelation.&rdquo; (2) In the Acts Paul has a subordinate position; in his own account he treats with &ldquo;the three&rdquo; on equal terms. (3) In the Acts Peter and James are on Paul's side from the first; in Galatians they are so only at the end of the conference, and after a discussion. (4) The Acts make the conference result in a decree, in which certain observances are imposed upon the Gentiles; Paul himself expressly declares that the only injunction was that they &ldquo;should remember the poor.&rdquo;

When Paul returned to Antioch Peter followed him, and for a time the two apostles worked in harmony. Peter &ldquo;did eat with the Gentiles.&rdquo; He shared the common table

at which the Jewish distinctions of meats were disregarded. He thereby accepted Paul's position. But when &ldquo;certain came from James&rdquo; he drew back. The position of James was probably that, even if the law had ceased to be valid as a means of justification, it was still valid as a rule of life. For reasons which are not apparent, possibly the wish not to break with the community at Jerusalem, not only Peter but Barnabas and the whole of the Jewish party at Antioch accepted that position, with its consequent obligation of separation from the Gentile brethren, not only in social life, but probably also in the partaking of the Lord's Supper. Paul showed that the position of Peter was illogical, and that he was self-convicted (κατεγνωσμένος ἦν, Gal. ii. 11). His argument was that the freedom from the law was complete, and that to attach merit to obedience to the law was to make disobedience to the law a sin, and, by causing those who sought to be justified by faith only to be transgressors, to make Christ a &ldquo;minister of sin.&rdquo; Obedience to any part of the law involved recognition of the whole of it as obligatory (Gal. v. 3), and consequently &ldquo;made void the grace of God.&rdquo;

The schism in the community at Antioch was probably never healed. It is not probable that Paul's contention was there victorious; for, while Paul never again speaks of that city, Peter seems to have remained there, and he was looked upon in later times as the founder of its church.

But this failure at Antioch served to Paul as the occasion for carrying out a bolder conception. The horizon of his mission widened before him. The &ldquo;fulness of the Gentiles&rdquo; had to be brought in. His diocese was no longer Antioch, but the whole of the Roman empire. The years that followed were almost wholly spent among its great cities, &ldquo;preaching among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ&rdquo; (Eph. iii. 8). He became the spiritual father of many communities, and he watched over them with a father's constant care. He gathered round him a company of faithful disciples, who shared with him his missionary work, and whom he sent sometimes to break new ground, sometimes to arrange disputes, sometimes to gather contributions, sometimes to examine and report. Of his travels, whether with them or alone, no complete record has been preserved; some of them are minutely described in the Acts, others within the same period are known only or chiefly from his epistles. In giving an account of them it is necessary to change to some extent the historical perspective which is presented in the Acts; for, in working up fragments of itineraries of Paul's companions into a consecutive narrative, many things are made to come into the foreground which Paul himself would probably have disregarded, and many things are omitted or thrown into the shade to which, from his letters, he appears to have attached a primary importance.

The first scene of his new activity, if indeed it be allowable to consider the conference at Jerusalem and the subsequent dispute at Antioch as having given occasion for a new departure, was probably the eastern part of Asia Minor,

and more particularly Galatia. Some of it he had visited before; and from the fact that the Galatians, though they had been heathens (Gal. iv. 8), were evidently acquainted with the law, it may be inferred that he still went on the track of Jewish missionaries, and that here, as elsewhere, Judaism had prepared the way for Christianity. Of his preaching he himself gives a brief summary; it was the vivid setting forth before their eyes of Jesus as the crucified

Messiah, and it was confirmed by evident signs of the working of the Spirit (Gal. iii. 1, 5). The new converts received it with enthusiasm; he felt for them as a father; and an illness (some have thought, from the form of expression in Gal. iv. 15, that it was an acute ophthalmia) which came upon him (assuming this to have been his first visit) intensified their mutual affection. What we learn specially of the Galatians is probably true also of the other Gentiles who received him; some of them were baptized (Gal. iii. 27), they were formed into communities (Gal. i. 2), and they were so far organized as to have a distinction between teachers and taught (Gal. vi. 6).

But an imperative call summoned him to Europe. The western part of Asia Minor, in which afterwards were formed the important churches of Ephesus, Colossæ, Hierapolis, and Laodicea, was for the present left alone. He passed on into Macedonia. The change was more than a passage from Asia to Europe. Hitherto, if Antioch be excepted, he had preached only in small provincial towns. Hence forward he preached chiefly, and at last exclusively, in the great centres of population. He began with Philippi, which was at once a great military post and the wealthy entrepôt of the gold and silver mines of the neighbouring Mount Pangæus. The testimony of the eye-witness whose account is incorporated in Acts xvi. 12-18 tells us that his first convert was a Jewish proselyte, named Lydia; and Paul himself mentions other women converts (Phil. iv. 2). There is the special interest about the community which soon grew up that it was organized after the manner of the guilds, of which there were many both at Philippi and in other towns of Macedonia, and that its administrative officers were entitled, probably from the analogy of those guilds, &ldquo;bishops&rdquo; and &ldquo;deacons.&rdquo;

In Europe, as in Asia, persecution attended him. He was &ldquo;shamefully entreated&rdquo; at Philippi (1 Thess. ii. 2), and according to the Acts the ill-treatment came not from the Jews but from the Gentile employers of a frenzied prophetess, who saw in Paul's preaching an element of danger to their craft. Consequently he left that city, and passing over Amphipolis, the political capital of the province, but the seat rather of the official classes than of trade, he went on to the great seaport and commercial city of Thessalonica. His converts there seem to have been chiefly among the Gentile workmen (1 Thess. iv. 11; 2 Thess. iii. 10-12), and he himself became one of them. Knowing as he did the scanty wages of their toil, he &ldquo;worked night and day that he might not burden any of them&rdquo; (1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8). But for all his working he does not seem to have earned enough to support his little company; he was constrained both once and again to accept help from Philippi (Phil. iv. 16). He was determined that, whatever he might have to endure, no sordid thought should enter into his relations with the Thessalonians; he would be to them only what a father is to his children, behaving himself &ldquo;holily and righteously and unblameably,&rdquo; and exhorting them to walk worthily of God who had called them (1 Thess. ii. 10-12). But there, as elsewhere, his preaching was &ldquo;in much conflict.&rdquo; The Jews were actively hostile. According to the account in the Acts (xvii. 5-9), they at last hounded on the lazzaroni of the city, who were doubtless moved as easily as a Moslem crowd in modern times by any cry of treason or infidelity, to attack the house of Jason (possibly one of Paul's kinsmen, Rom. xvi. 21), either because Paul himself was lodging there, or because it was the meeting-place of the community. Paul and Silas were not there, and so escaped; but it was thought prudent that they should go at once and secretly to the neighbouring small town of Berœa. Thither, however, the fanatical Jews of Thessalonica pursued them; and Paul, leaving his companions Silas and Timothy at Berœa, gave

up his preaching in Macedonia for a time and went southwards to Athens.

At The narrative which the Acts give of his stay at Athens Athens. Is one of the most striking, and at the same time one of the most difficult, episodes in the book. What is the meaning of the inscription on the altar? What is the Areopagus? How far does the reported speech give Paul's actual words? What did the Athenians understand by the Resurrection? These are examples of questions on which it is easy to argue, but which, with our present knowledge, it is impossible to decide. One point seems to be clear, both from the absence of any further mention of the city in Paul's writings and from the absence of any permanent results of his visit, that his visit was a comparative failure. It was almost inevitable that it should be so. Athens was the educational centre of Greece. It was a great university city. For its students and professors the Christianity which Paul preached had only an intellectual interest. They were not conscious of the need, which Christianity presupposes, of a great moral reformation; nor indeed was it until many years afterwards, when Christianity had added to itself certain philosophical elements and become not only a religion but a theology, that the educated Greek mind, whether at Athens or elsewhere, took serious hold of it. Of Paul's own inner life at Athens we learn, not from the Acts, but from one of his epistles. His thoughts were not with the philosophers but with the communities of Macedonia and the converts among whom he had preached with such different success. He cared far less for the world of mocking critics and procrastinating idlers in the chief seat of culture than he did for the enthusiastic artisans of Thessalonica, to whom it was a burning question of dispute how soon the Second Advent would come, and what would be the relation of the living members of the church to those who had fallen asleep. He would fain have gone back to them, but &ldquo;Satan hindered him&rdquo; (1 Thess. ii. 17, 18); and he sent Timothy in his stead &ldquo;to comfort them as concerning their faith,&rdquo; and to prevent their relapsing, as probably other converts did, under the pressure of persecution (1 Thess. iii. 2, 3).

From Athens he went to Corinth, the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, and the real centre of the busy life of Greece. It was not the ancient Greek city with Greek inhabitants, but a new city which had grown up in Roman times, with a vast population of mingled races, who had added to the traditional worship of Aphrodite the still more sensuous cults of the East. Never before had Paul had so vast or so promising a field for his preaching; for alike the filthy sensuality of its wealthy classes and the intense wretchedness of its half-million of paupers and slaves (τὴν βδελυρίαν τῶν ἐκεῖσε πλουσίων καὶ τῶν πενήτων ἀθλιότητα, Alciphr. iii. 60) were prepared ground upon which his preaching could sow the seed, in the one case of moral reaction, and in the other of hope. At first the greatness of his task appalled him: &ldquo;I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling&rdquo; (1 Cor. ii. 3). But he laid down for himself from the first the fixed principle that he would preach nothing but &ldquo;Jesus Christ, and him crucified&rdquo; (1 Cor. ii. 2), compromising with neither the Jews, to whom &ldquo;the word of the cross,&rdquo; i.e., the doctrine of a crucified Messiah, was &ldquo;a stumbling-block,&rdquo; nor with the Gentile philosophers, to whom it was &ldquo;foolishness&rdquo; (1 Cor. i. 18, 23). It is probable that there were other preachers of the gospel at Corinth, especially among the Jews, since soon afterwards there was a Judaizing party; Paul's own converts seem to have been chiefly among the Gentiles (1 Cor. xii. 2). Some of them apparently belonged to the luxurious classes (1 Cor. vi. 11), a few of them to the influential and literary classes (1 Cor. i. 26); but the majority were from the lowest classes, the &ldquo;foolish,&rdquo;

the &ldquo;weak,&rdquo; the &ldquo;base,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;despised&rdquo; (1 Cor. i. 27, 28). And among the poor he lived a poor man's life. It was his special &ldquo;glorying&rdquo; (1 Cor. ix. 15; 2 Cor. xi. 10) that he would not be burdensome to any of them (1 Cor. ix. 12; 2 Cor. xi. 9, xii. 13). He worked at his trade of tent-making; but it was a hard sad life. His trade was precarious, and did not suffice for even his scanty needs (2 Cor. xi. 9). Beneath the enthusiasm of the preacher was the physical distress of hunger and cold and ill-usage (1 Cor. iv. 11). But in &ldquo;all his distress and affliction&rdquo; he was comforted by the good news which Timothy brought him of the steadfastness of the Thessalonian converts; the sense of depression which preceded it is indicated by the graphic phrase, &ldquo;Now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord&rdquo; (1 Thess. iii. 6-8). With Timothy came Silas, both of them bringing help for his material needs from the communities of Macedonia (2 Cor. xi. 9; Acts xviii. 5; perhaps only from Philippi, Phil. iv. 15), and it was apparently after their coming that the active preaching began (2 Cor. i. 19) which roused the Jews to a more open hostility.

Of that hostility an interesting incident is recorded in the Acts (xviii. 12-16); but a more important fact in Paul's life was the sending of a letter, the earliest of all his letters which have come down to us, to the community which he had founded at Thessalonica. Its genuineness, though perhaps not beyond dispute, is almost certain. Part of it is a renewed exhortation to steadfastness in face of persecutions, to purity of life, and to brotherly love; part of it is apparently an answer to a question which had arisen among the converts when some of their number had died before the Parousia; and part of it is a general summary of their duties as members of a Christian community. It was probably followed, some months afterwards, by a second letter; but the genuineness of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians has been much disputed. It proceeds upon the same general lines as the first, but appears to correct the misapprehensions which the first had caused as to the nearness of the Parousia.

After having lived probably about two years at Corinth Paul resolved, for reasons to which he himself gives no clue, to change the centre of his activity from Corinth to

Ephesus. Like Corinth, Ephesus was a great commercial city with a vast mixed population; it afforded a similar field for preaching, and it probably gave him increased facilities for communicating with the communities to which he was a spiritual father. It is clear from his epistles that his activity at Ephesus was on a much larger scale than the Acts of the Apostles indicate. Probably the author of the memoirs from which this part of the narrative in the Acts was compiled was not at this time with him; consequently there remain only fragmentary and for the most part unimportant anecdotes. His real life at this, time is vividly pictured in the Epistles to the Corinthians. It was a life of hardship and danger and anxiety: &ldquo;Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and we toil, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we intreat; we are made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things even until now&rdquo; (1 Cor. iv. 11-13). It was almost more than he could bear: &ldquo;We were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life &rdquo; (2 Cor. i. 8). He went about like one condemned to die, upon whom the sentence might at any moment be carried out (2 Cor. i. 9). Once, at least, it seemed as though the end had actually come, for he had to fight with beasts in the arena (1 Cor. xv. 32); and once, if not on the same occasion, he was only saved by Prisca and Aquila, &ldquo;who for his life laid down their own necks&rdquo; (Rom. xvi. 4). But that which

filled a larger place in his thoughts than the &ldquo;perils&rdquo; of either the past or the present was the &ldquo;care of all the churches.&rdquo; He was the centre round which a system of communities revolved; and partly by letters, partly by sending his companions, and partly by personal visits, he kept himself informed of their varied concerns, and endeavoured to give a direction to their life.

An émeute which took place at Ephesus was, according to the Acts, the occasion if not the cause of his leaving that city; &ldquo;a great door and effectual had been opened unto him&rdquo; there (1 Cor. xvi. 9), and the growth of the new religion had caused an appreciable diminution in the trade of those who profited by the zeal of the worshippers at the temple (Acts xix. 23 to xx. 1). He went overland to Troas, where, as at Ephesus, &ldquo;a door was opened unto him in the Lord&rdquo; (2 Cor. ii. 12); but the thought of Corinth was stronger than the wish to make a new community. He was eager to meet Titus, and to hear of the

effect of his now lost letter; and he went on into Macedonia. It is at this point of his life more than at any other that he reveals to us his inner history. At Ephesus he had been hunted almost to death; he had carried his life in his hand; and, &ldquo;even when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no relief, but we were afflicted on every side; without were fightings, within were fears&rdquo; (2 Cor. vii. 5). But, though the &ldquo;outward man was decaying, yet the inward man was renewed day by day&rdquo;; and the climax of splendid paradoxes which he wrote soon afterwards to the Corinthians (2 Cor. vi. 3-10) was not a rhetorical ideal, but the story of his actual life. But after

a time Titus came with news which gladdened Paul's heart (2 Cor. vii. 7). He had been well received at Corinth. The letter had made a deep impression. The admonitions had been listened to. The Corinthians had repented of their conduct. They had rid themselves of &ldquo;him that did the wrong,&rdquo; and Paul was &ldquo;of good courage concerning them&rdquo; (2 Cor. vii. 8-16). He then wrote the second of his extant letters to them, which was sent by Titus and the unknown &ldquo;brother whose praise in the gospel is spread through all the churches,&rdquo; and who had been elected by the churches to travel with Paul and his company (2 Cor. viii. 18, 19). It was probably in the course of this journey that he went beyond the borders of Macedonia into the neighbouring province of Illyricum

(Rom. xv. 19); but his real goal was Corinth. For the third time he went there, and, overcoming the scruples of his earlier visits, he was the guest of Gaius, in whose house the meetings of the community took place (Rom. xvi. 23).

Of the incidents of his visit no record remains; the Acts do not even mention it. But it was the culminating point of his intellectual activity; for in the course of it he wrote the greatest of all his letters, the Epistle to the Romans. And, as the body of that epistle throws an invaluable light upon the tenor of his preaching at this

time to the communities, among which that of Rome can hardly have been singular, so the salutations at the end, whether they be assumed to be an integral part of the whole or not, are a wonderful revelation of the breadth and intimacy of his relations with the individual members of those communities. But that which was as much in his mind as either the great question of the relation of faith to the law or the needs of individual converts in

the Christian communities was the collection of alms &ldquo;for the poor among the saints that were at Jerusalem&rdquo; (Rom. xv. 26). The communities of Palestine had probably never ceased to be what the first disciples were, communities of paupers in a pauperized country, and consequently dependent upon external help. And all through his missionary journeys Paul had remembered the injunction which had sealed his compact with &ldquo;the three&rdquo; (Gal. ii. 10). In Galatia (1 Cor. xvi. 1), among the poor and persecuted churches of Macedonia (Rom. xv. 26; 2 Cor. viii. 1-4), at Corinth, and in Achaia (1 Cor. xvi. 1-3; 2 Cor. viii. and ix.), the Gentiles who had been made partakers with the Jews in spiritual things had been successfully told that &ldquo;they owed to them also to minister unto them in carnal things&rdquo; (Rom. xv. 27). The contributions were evidently on a large scale; and Paul, to prevent the charges of malversation which were sometimes made against him, associated with himself &ldquo;in the matter of this grace&rdquo; a person chosen by the churches themselves (2 Cor. viii. 19-21, xii. 17, 18); some have thought that all the persons whose names are mentioned in Acts xx. 4 were delegates of their respective churches for this purpose.

He resolved to go to Jerusalem himself with this material testimony of the brotherly feeling of the Gentile communities, and then, &ldquo;having no more any place&rdquo; in Greece, to go to the new mission fields of Rome and the still farther West (Rom. xv. 23-25). He was not certain that his peace-offering would be acceptable to the Jewish Christians, and he had reason to apprehend violence from the

unbelieving Jews. His departure from Corinth, like that from Ephesus, was probably hastened by danger to his life; and, instead of going direct to Jerusalem (an intention which seems to be implied in Rom. xv. 25), he and his companions took a circuitous route round the coasts of the Ægean Sea. His course lay through Philippi, Troas, Mitylene, Chios, and Miletus, where he took farewell of the elders of the community at Ephesus in an address of which some reminiscences are probably preserved in Acts xx. 18-34. Thence he went, by what was probably an ordinary route of commerce, to the Syrian coast, and at last he reached the Holy City.

The narrative which the Acts give of the incidents of his life there is full of grave difficulties. It leaves altogether in the background that which Paul himself mentions as his chief reason for making the visit; and it relates that he accepted the advice which was given him to avail himself of the custom of vicarious vows, in order to show, by his conformity to prevalent usages, that &ldquo;there was no truth&rdquo; in the reports that he had told the Gentiles &ldquo;not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs&rdquo; (Acts xxi. 20-26). If this narrative be judged by the principles which Paul proclaims in the Epistle to the Galatians, it seems hardly credible. He had broken with Judaism, and his whole preaching was a preaching of the &ldquo;righteousness which is of faith,&rdquo; as an antithesis to, and as superseding, the &ldquo;righteousness which is of the law.&rdquo; But now he is represented as resting his defence on his conformity to the law, on his being &ldquo;a Pharisee and the son of Pharisees,&rdquo; who was called in question for the one point only that he believed, as other Pharisees believed, in the resurrection of the dead.

What colouring of a later time, derived from later controversies, has been spread over the original outline of the history cannot now be told. While on the one hand the difficulties of the narrative as it stands cannot be overlooked, yet on the other hand no faithful historian will undertake, in the absence of all collateral evidence, the task of discriminating that which belongs to a contemporary testimony and that which belongs to a subsequent recension. From this uncertainty the general concurrence of even adverse critics excepts the &ldquo;we&rdquo; section (Acts xxvii. 1, xxviii. 16); whoever may have been the author of those &ldquo;we&rdquo; sections, and whatever may be the amount of revision to which they have been subjected, they seem to have for their basis the diary or itinerary of a companion of Paul, and the account of the voyage contains at least the indisputable fact that Paul went to Rome.

But his life at Rome and all the rest of his history are enveloped in mists from which no single gleam of certain light emerges. Almost every writer, whether apologetic or sceptical, has some new hypothesis respecting it; and the number and variety of the hypotheses which have been already framed is a warning, until new evidence appears, against adding to their number. The preliminary questions which have to be solved before any hypothesis can be said to have a foundation in fact are themselves extremely intricate; and their solution depends upon considerations to which, in the absence of positive and determining evidence, different minds tend inevitably to give

different interpretations. The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles bearing Paul's name, which, if they be his, must be assigned to the later period of his life, viz., those to the Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians, to Philemon, to Timothy, and to Titus. As these epistles do not stand or fall together, but give rise in each case to separate discussion, the theories vary according as they are severally thought to be genuine or false. The least disputed is the Epistle to Philemon; but it is also the least fruitful in either doctrine or biographical details. Next to it in the order of general acceptance is the Epistle to the Philippians. The Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled in the absence of collateral evidence, since they mainly turn partly on the historical probability of the rapid growth in those communities of certain forms of theological speculation, and partly on the psychological probability of the almost sudden development in Paul's own mind of new methods of conceiving and presenting Christian doctrine. The pastoral epistles, viz., those to Timothy and to Titus, have given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even less defensible.

But, even if this preliminary question of the genuineness of the several epistles be decided in each instance in the affirmative, there remains the further question whether they or any of them belong to the period of Paul's imprisonment at Rome, and, if so, what they imply as to his history. It is held by many writers that they all belong to an earlier period of his life, especially to his stay at Cæsarea (Acts xxiv. 23, 27). It is held by other writers that they were all sent from Rome, and with some such writers it has become almost an article of faith that he was imprisoned there not once but twice. It is sometimes further supposed that in the interval between the first and second imprisonments he made his intended journey to Spain (Rom. xv. 24, which is apparently regarded as an accomplished fact by the author of the Muratorian fragment); and that either before or after his journey to Spain he visited again the communities of the Ægean seaboard which are mentioned in the pastoral epistles.

The place and manner and occasion of his death are not less uncertain than the facts of his later life. The

only fragment of approximately contemporary evidence is a vague and rhetorical passage in the letter of Clement of Rome (c. 5): &ldquo;Paul. . . having taught the whole world righteousness, and having come to the goal of the West (ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως), and having borne witness (μαρτυρήσας) before the rulers, so was released from the world and went to the Holy Place, having become the greatest example of patience.&rdquo; The two material points in this passage, (1) &ldquo;the limit of the West,&rdquo; (2) &ldquo;having borne witness,&rdquo; are fruitful sources of controversy. The one may mean either Rome or Spain, the other may mean either &ldquo;having testified&rdquo; or &ldquo;having suffered martyrdom.&rdquo; It is not until towards the end of the 2d century, after many causes had operated both to create and to crush traditions, that mention is made of Paul as having suffered about the same time as Peter at Rome; but the credibility of the assertion is weakened by its connexion in the same sentence with the erroneous statement that Peter and Paul went to Italy together after having founded the church at Corinth (Dionysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebius, H. E., ii. 25). A Roman presbyter named Gaius speaks, a few years later, of the martyr-tombs of the two apostles being visible at Rome (quoted by Eusebius, l. c.); but neither this testimony nor that of Tertullian (De præser. 36, Scorp. 15, Adv. Marc. iv. 5) is sufficient to establish more than the general probability that Paul suffered martyrdom. But there is no warrant for going beyond this, as almost all Paul's biographers have done, and finding an actual date for his martyrdom in the so-called Neronian persecution of 64 A.D.

The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain as the date of his death. We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place. The nearest approach to a fixed point from which the dates of some events may be calculated is that of the death of Festus, which may probably, though by no means certainly, be placed in 62 A.D.; even if this date were certainly known, new evidence would be required to determine the length of time during which he held office; all that can or could be said is that Paul was sent to Rome some time before the death of Festus in 62 A.D. How widely opinions differ as to the rest of the chronology may be seen by a reference to the chronological table which is given by Meyer in the introduction to his Commentary on the Acts, and after him by Farrar, St Paul, vol. ii. p. 624.

Of his personality he himself tells us as much as need be known when he quotes the adverse remarks of his opponents at Corinth: &ldquo;his letters, they say, are weighty and strong; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account&rdquo; (2 Cor. x. 10). The Christian romance-writer elaborated the picture, of which some traits may have come to him from tradition: &ldquo;a man small in stature, bald-headed, bow-legged, stout, close-browed, with a slightly prominent nose, full of grace; for at one time he seemed like a man, at another time he had the face of an angel&rdquo; (&ldquo;Acta Pauli et Theclæ,&rdquo; c. 3, ap. Tischendorf, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, p. 41); and the pagan caricaturist speaks of him in similar terms, as &ldquo;bald in front, with a slightly prominent nose, who had taken an aerial journey

into the third heaven&rdquo; (pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, c. 12). Some early representations of him on gilded glasses and sarcophagi still remain; accounts of them will be found in Smith and Cheetham, ''Dict. Chr. Ant.'', vol. ii. p. 1621; Schultze, Die Katakomben, Leipsic, 1882, p. 149. That he was sometimes stricken down by illness is clear from Gal. iv. 13 (some have thought also from 2 Cor. ii. 4); and at his moments of greatest exaltation &ldquo;there was given to him a stake in the flesh. . . that he should not be exalted overmuch&rdquo; (2 Cor. xii. 7). The nature of this special weakness has given rise to many conjectures; the most probable is that it was one of those obscure nervous disorders which are allied to epilepsy and sometimes mistaken for it.