Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/268



bear a meaning accordant with this version. The first noun never occurs in the N. T. except in a legal sense. The Greek is [Greek: Ho antidikos humôn diabolos], (1 Pet. v. 8,) in which the last word (diabolos) need not be construed as a substantive expression, but may be made an adjective, belonging to the second word, (antidikos.) The last word, under these circumstances, need not necessarily mean "the devil," in any sense; but referring directly to the simple sense of its primitive, must be made to mean "calumniating," "slanderous," "accusing,"—and in connection with the technical, legal term, [Greek: antidikos], (whose primary, etymological sense is uniformly a legal one, "the plaintiff or prosecutor in a suit at law,") can mean only "the calumniating (or accusing) prosecutor." The common writers on the epistle, being utterly ignorant of its general scope, have failed to apprehend the true force of this expression; but the clear, critical judgment of Rosenmueller, (though he also was without the advantage of a knowledge of its history,) led him at once to see the greater justice of the view here given; and he accordingly adopts it, yet not with the definite, technical application of terms justly belonging to the passage. He refers vaguely to others who have taken this view, but does not give names.

The time when this epistle was written is very variously fixed by the different writers to whom I have above referred. Lardner dating it at Rome, concludes that the time was between A. D. 63 and 65, because he thinks that Peter could not have arrived at Rome earlier. This inference depends entirely on what he does not prove,—the assertion that by Babylon, in the date, is meant Rome. The proofs of its being another place, which I have given above, will therefore require that it should have been written before that time, if Peter did then go to Rome. And Michaelis seems to ground upon this notion his belief, that it "was written either not long before, or not long after, the year 60." But the nobly impartial Hug comes to our aid again, with the sentence, which, though bearing against a fiction most desirable for his church, he unhesitatingly passes on its date. From his admirable detail of the contents and design of the epistle, he makes it evident that it was written (from Babylon) some years after the time when Peter is commonly said to have gone to Rome, never to return. This is the opinion which I have necessarily adopted, after taking his view of the design of the epistle.

Another series of passages in this epistle refers to the remarkable fact, that the Christians were at that time suffering under an accusation that they were "evil-doers," malefactors, criminals liable to the vengeance of the law; and that this accusation was so general, that the name, Christian, was already a term denoting a criminal directly liable to this legal vengeance. This certainly was a state of things hitherto totally unparalleled in the history of the followers of Christ. In all the accounts previously given of the nature of the attacks made on them by their enemies, it is made to appear that no accusation whatever was sustained or even brought against them, in reference to moral or legal offences; but they were always presented in the light of mere religious dissenters and sectaries. At Corinth, the independent and equitable Gallio dismissed them from the judgment-seat, with the upright decision that they were chargeable with no crime whatever. Felix and Festus, with king Agrippa II., also, alike esteemed the whole procedure against Paul as a mere theological or religious affair, relating to doctrines and not to moral actions. At Ephesus, even one of the high officers of the city did not hesitate to declare, in the face of a mob raging against Paul and his com