 Section 6 of the Great Events by Famous Historians This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Mike Botez The Great Events by Famous Historians Edited by Charles F. Horn, Rossiter Johnson, and John Rudd The Rise and Spread of Christianity, A.D. 33 by Joseph Ernest Rennan, Part 2 Till now the Church of Jerusalem presented itself to the outside world as a little Galilean colony, the friends whom Jesus had made as Jerusalem and its environs, such as Lazarus, Martha, Mary of Bethany, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus had disappeared from the scene. The Galilean group who pressed around the 12 alone remained compact and active. The proselytism of the faithful was chiefly carried on by means of struggling conversions in which the fervor of their souls was communicated to their neighbors. Their preachings under the porticoes of Solomon were addressed to circles not at all numerous, but the effect of this was only the more profound. Their discourses consisted principally of quotations from the Old Testament, by which it was sought to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. The real preaching was the private conversations of these good and sincere men. It was the reflection, always noticeable in their discourses, of the words of Jesus. It was, above all, their piety, their gentleness. The attraction of communistic life carried with it also a great deal of force. Their houses were a sort of hospitals, in which all the poor and the forsaken found asylum and soccer. One of the first to affiliate himself with the rising society was a Cypriot, named Joseph Halevi or the Levite. Like the others, he sold his land and carried the price of it to the feet of the Twelve. He was an intelligent man with a devotion proof against everything and a fluent speaker. The apostles attached him closely to themselves and called him Barnaba, that is to say, the son of prophecy or of preaching. He was accounted, in fact, of the number of the prophets, that is to say, of the inspired preachers. Later on, we shall see and play a capital part. Next to Saint Paul, he was the most active missionary of the first century. A certain Nassan, his countryman, was converted about the same time. Cyprus possessed many Jews. Barnabas and Nassan were undoubtedly Jewish by race. The intimate and prolonged relations of Barnabas with the Church at Jerusalem induces the belief that Syro Caldaic was familiar to him. A conquest almost as important as that of Barnabas was that of one John, who bore the Roman surname of Marcus. He was a cousin of Barnabas and was circumcised. His mother, Mary, enjoyed uneasy competency. She was likewise converted. And her dwelling was more than once made the rendezvous of the apostles. These two conversions appear to have been the work of Peter. The first flame was thus spread with great rapidity. The men, the most celebrated of the apostolic century, were almost all gained over to the cause in two or three years. By a sort of simultaneous attraction, it was a second Christian generation. Similar to that which had been formed five or six years previously upon the shores of Lake Tiberias. This second generation had not seen Jesus and could not equal the first in authority. But it was destined to surpass it in activity and in its love for distant missions. One of the best known among the new converts was Stephen, who before his conversion appears to have been only a simple prosolite. He was a man full of ardour and of passion. His faith was the most fervent and he was considered to be favoured with all the gifts of the spirit. Philip, who like Stephen was a zealous deacon and evangelist, attached himself to the community about the same time. He was often confounded with his namesake, the apostle. Finally, there were converted at this epoch, Andronicus and Junia, probably husband and wife, who like Aquila and Priscilla later on were the model of an apostolic couple, devoted to all the duties of missionary work. They were of the blood of Israel and were in the closest relations with the apostles. The new converts, when touched by grace, were all Jews by religion, but they belonged to two different classes of Jews. The one class was the Hebrews, that is to say the Jews of Palestine, speaking Hebrew or rather Armenian, reading the Bible in the Hebrew text. The other class was Hellenists, that is to say Jews speaking Greek and reading the Bible in Greek. These last were further subdivided in two classes, the one being of Jewish blood, the other being prosolites, that is to say people of non-Israelite origin, allied in diverse degrees to Judaism. These Hellenists, who almost all came from Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt or Kyrene, lived at Jerusalem in distinct quarters. They had their separate synagogues and formed thus little communities apart. Jerusalem contained a great number of these special synagogues. It was in these that the words of Jesus found the soil prepared to receive it and to make it fructify. The primitive nucleus at the church at Jerusalem had been composed wholly and exclusively of Hebrews. The Aramaic dialect, which was the language of Jesus, was alone known and employed there. But we see that from the second or third year after the death of Jesus, Greek was introduced in the little community, where it soon became dominant. In consequence of their daily relations with a new brethren, Peter, John, James, Jude and in general the Galilean disciples acquired the Greek with much more facility than if they had already known something of it. The Palestinian dialect came to be abandoned from the day in which people dreamed of a widespread propaganda. A provincial patois, which was rarely written and which was not spoken beyond Syria, was as little adapted as could be to such an object. Greek, on the contrary, was necessarily imposed on Christianity. It was of the time the universal language, at least for the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. It was in particular the language of the Jews who were dispersed over the Roman Empire. The conversions to Christianity became soon much more numerous among the Hellenists than among the Hebrews. The old Jews at Jerusalem were but little drawn toward the sect of Provincials, moderately advanced in the single science that a Pharisee appreciated the science of the law. The position of the little church in regard to Judaism was, as with Jesus himself, rather equivocal. But every religious or political party carries in itself a force that dominates it and oblige it, despite itself, to revolve in its own orbit. The first Christians, whatever their apparent respect for Judaism was, were in reality only Jews by birth or by exterior customs. The true spirit of the sect came from another source, that which grew out of the official Judaism was the Talmud. But Christianity has no affinity with the Talmudic School. This is why Christianity found special favor among the parties, the least Jewish belonging to Judaism. The rigid orthodoxies took to it but little. It was the newcomers, people scarcely cataclyzed, who had not been to any of the great schools, free from routine, and not initiated into the holy tongue, which lent a year to the apostles and the disciples. This family of simple and united brethren drew associates from every quarter. In return for that which these brought, they obtained an assured future, the society of a congenial brotherhood, and precious hopes. The general custom before entering the sect was for each one to convert his fortune into species. These fortunes ordinarily consisted of small, rural, semi-barren properties and difficult of cultivation. It had one advantage, especially for unmarried people. It enabled them to exchange these plots of land against funds sunk in an assurance society with a view to the Kingdom of God. Even some married people came to the fore in that arrangement, and precautions were taken to ensure that the associates brought all that they really possessed and did not retain anything outside the common fund. Indeed, seeing that each one received out of the latter share, not in proportion to what one put in, but in proportion to one's needs, every reservation of property was actually a theft made upon the community. The Christian communism had religion for a basis, while modern socialism has nothing of the kind. Under such a social constitution, the administrative difficulties were necessarily very numerous, whatever might be the degree of fraternal feeling which prevailed. Between two factions of a community whose language was not the same, misapprehensions were inevitable. It was difficult for well-descended Jews not to entertain some content for their core-religionists who were less noble. In fact, it was not long before murmurs began to be heard. The Hellenists, who each day became more numerous, complained because their widows were not so well treated at the distributions as those of the Hebrews, till now the apostles had presided over the affairs of the treasury. But in face of these protestations, they felt the necessity of delegating to others this part of their powers. They proposed to the community to confide this administrative cares to seven experienced and considerate men. The proposition was accepted. The seven chosen were Stefanas, or Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nikhanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas. Stephen was the most important of the seven, and in a sense their chief. To the administrators thus designated were given the Syriac name of Shamashin. They were also sometimes called the Seven to distinguish them from the Twelve. Such then was the origin of the Diaconate, which is found to be the most ancient ecclesiastical function, the most ancient of sacred orders. Later, all the organized churches in imitation of that of Jerusalem had deacons. The growth of such an institution was marvelous. It placed the claims of the poor on unequality with religious services. It was a proclamation of the truth that social problems are the first which should occupy the attention of mankind. It was the foundation of political economy in the religious sense. The deacons were the first preachers of Christianity. As organizers, financiers, and administrators, they filled a yet more important part. These practical men, in constant contact with the poor, the sick, the women, went everywhere, observed everything, exhorted, and were most efficacious in converting people. They accomplished more than the apostles, who remained on their seats of honor at Jerusalem. They were the founders of Christianity, in respect of that which it possessed, which was most solid and enduring. At an early period, women were admitted to this office. They were designated, as in our day, by the name of sisters. At first, widows were selected. Later, virgins were preferred. The tact which guided the primitive church in all this was admirable. The grand idea of consecrating by a sort of religious character and of subjecting to a regular discipline, the women who were not in the bonds of marriage, is Holy Christian. The term widow became synonymous with a religious person, consecrated to God, and by consequence a deaconess. In those countries where the wife at the age of 24 is already faded, where there is no middle state between the infant and the old woman, it was a kind of a new life, which was created for that portion of the human species, the most capable of devotion. These women constantly going to and fro were admirable missionaries of the new religion. The bishop and the priest as we now know them did not yet exist. Still, the pastoral ministry, that intimate familiarity of souls, not bound by ties of blood, had already been established. This latter has ever been the special gift of Jesus, and a kind of heritage from him. Jesus had often said that to everyone he was more than a father and a mother, and that in order to follow him it was necessary to forsake those the most dear to us. Christianity placed some things above family. It instituted brotherhood and spiritual marriage. The ancient form of marriage, which placed the wife unreservedly in the power of the husband, was pure slavery. The moral liberty of the woman began when the church gave her in Jesus a guide and a confidant, who should advise and console her, listen always to her, and on occasion counsel resist on her part. Woman needs to be governed and is happy in so being, but it is necessary that she should love him who governs her. This is what neither ancient societies nor Judaism nor Islamism have been able to do. Woman has never had up to the present time a religious conscience, a moral individuality, an opinion of her own, except in Christianity. It was now about the year 36. Tiberius at Caprae has little idea of the enemy to the empire which is growing up. In two or three years this act had made surprising progress. It numbered several thousand of the faithful. It was already easy to foresee that its conquests would be affected chiefly among the Hellenists and proselytes. The Galilean group which had listened to the master, though preserving always its presidents, seemed as if swamped by the floods of newcomers speaking Greek. One could already perceive that the principal parts were to be played by the latter. At the time at which we are arrived, no pagan that is to say no man without some anterior connection with Judaism had entered into the church. Proselytes however performed very important functions in it. The circle de provenance of the disciples had likewise largely extended. It is no longer a simple little college of Palestinians. We can count in it people from Cyprus, Antioch and Kyrene and from almost all the points of the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean where Jewish colonies had been established. Egypt alone was wanting in the primitive church and for a long time continued to be so. It was inevitable that the preachings of the new sect although delivered with so much reserve should revive the animosities which had accumulated against its founder and eventually brought about his death. The Sadducee family of Hanan who had caused the death of Jesus was still reigning. Joseph Caiaphas occupied up to 36 the sovereign pontificate, the effective power of which he gave over to his father-in-law Hanan and to his relatives John and Alexander. These arrogant and pitiless men viewed with impatience a troop of good and holy people without official title winning the favor of the multitude. Once or twice Peter and John and the principal members of the Apostolic College were put in prison and condemned to flagellation. This was the chastisement inflicted on heretics. The authorization of the Romans was not necessary in order to apply it. As we might indeed suppose these brutalities only served to inflame the ardor of the apostles. They came forth from the Sanhedrim where they had just undergone flagellation rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for him whom they loved. Eternal puerility of penal repressions applied to things of the soul. They were regarded no doubt as men of order, as models of prudence and wisdom. These blunderers who seriously believed in the year 36 to gain the upper hand of Christianity by means of a few strokes of a whip. These outrages preceded chiefly from the Sadducees that is to say from the upper clergy who crowded the temple and derived from it immense profits. We do not find that the Pharisees exhibited toward the sect the animosity they displayed to Jesus. The new believers were strict and pious people, somewhat resembling in their manner of life the Pharisees themselves. The rage which the latter manifested against the founder arose from the superiority of Jesus, a superiority which he was at no pains to dissimulate. His delicate raileries, his wit, his charm, his contempt for hypocrites had kindled a ferocious hatred. The apostles on the contrary were devoid of wit. They never employed irony. The Pharisees were at times favorable to them. Many Pharisees had even become Christians. The terrible anathemas of Jesus against Pharisees had not yet been written, and the accounts of the words of the master were neither general nor uniform. These first Christians were besides people so inoffensive that many persons of the Jewish aristocracy who did not exactly form part of the sect were well disposed toward them. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who had known Jesus, remained no doubt with the Church in the bonds of brotherhood. The most celebrated Jewish doctor of the age, Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder, grandson of Hillel, a man of broad and very tolerant ideas, spoke, it is said, in the Sanhedrim, in favor of permitting gospel preaching. The author of the Acts credits him with some excellent reasoning, which ought to be the rule of conduct of governments on all occasions when they find themselves confronted with novelties of an intellectual or moral order. If this work is frivolous, said he, leave it alone, it will fall of itself. If it is serious, how dare you resist the work of God? In any case, you will not succeed in stopping it. Gamaliel's words were hardly listened to. Liberal minds in the midst of opposing fanaticism have no chance of succeeding. A terrible commotion was produced by the deacon Stephen. His preaching had, as it would appear, great success. Multitudes flocked around him, and these gatherings resulted in acrimonious quarrels. It was chiefly Hellenists or proselytes, habitue of the synagogue called Libertini, people of Kyrene, of Alexandria, of Cilicia, of Ephesus, who took an active part in these disputes. Stephen passionately maintained that Jesus was the Messiah, that the priests had committed a crime in putting him to death, that the Jews were rebels, sons of rebels, people who rejected evidence. The authorities resolved to dispatch this audacious preacher. Several witnesses were suborned to seize upon some words in his discourses against Moses. Naturally, they found that for which they sought. Stephen was arrested and led into the presence of the Sanhedrim. The sentence with which they reproached him was almost identical with the one which led to the condemnation of Jesus. They accused him of saying that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the temple and change the traditions attributed to Moses. It is quite possible, indeed, that Stephen had used such language. A Christian of that epoch could not have had the idea of speaking directly against the law in as much as all still observed it. As for traditions, however, Stephen might combat them as Jesus had himself done. Nevertheless, these traditions were foolishly ascribed by the Orthodox to Moses, and people attributed to them a value equal to that of the written law. Stephen defended himself by expounding the Christian thesis, with the wealth of citations from the written law, from the psalms, from the prophets, and wound up by reproaching the members of the Sanhedrim with the murder of Jesus. Yes, stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart said he to them, you will then ever resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers also have done? Which of the prophets have not your fathers prosecuted? They have slain those who announced the coming of the just one, whom you have betrayed, and of whom you have been the murderers. This law that you have received from the mouth of angels you have not kept. At these words a scrim of rage interrupted him. Stephen, his excitement increasing more and more, fell into one of those transports of enthusiasm, which were called the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. His eyes were fixed on high, he witnessed the glory of God, and Jesus, by the side of his father, and cried out, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of God. The whole assembly stopped their ears and threw themselves upon him, gnashing their teeth. He was drugged outside the city and stoned. The witnesses, who according to the law had to cast the first stones, divested themselves of their garments, and laid them at the feet of a young fanatic named Saul or Paul, who was thinking with secret joy of the renown he was acquiring in participating in the death of a blasphemer. In that epoch the persecutors of Christianity were not Romans, they were Orthodox Jews. The Romans preserved in the midst of this fanaticism a principle of tolerance and of reason. If we can reproach the imperial authority with anything, it is with being too lenient, and with not having cut short with a stroke, the civil consequences of a sanguinary law, which visited with death religious derelictions. But as yet the Roman domination was not so complete as it became later. A Stephen's death may have taken place at any time during the years 36, 37, 38. We cannot therefore affirm whether Caiaphas ought to be held responsible for it. Caiaphas was deposed by Lucius Vitelius in the year 36, shortly after the time of Pilate. But the change was inconsiderable. He had for a successor his brother-in-law, Jonathan, son of Hanan. The latter in turn was succeeded by his brother Theophilus, son of Hanan, who continued to pontificate in the house of Hanan till the year 42. Hanan was still alive and possessed of the real power, maintained in his family the principles of pride, severity, hatred against innovators, which were, so to speak, hereditary. The death of Stephen produced a great impression. The proselytes solemnized his funeral with tears and groanings. The separation of the new sectories from Judaism was not yet absolute. The proselytes and the Hellenists, less strict in regard to orthodoxy than the pure Jews, considered that they ought to render public homage to a man who respected their constitution and whose peculiar beliefs did not put him without the pale of the law. Thus began the era of Christian martyrs. The murder of Stephen was not an isolated event. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Roman functionaries, the Jews brought to bear upon the church a real persecution. It seems that the vexation pressed chiefly on the Hellenists and the proselytes, whose free behavior exasperated the orthodox. The Church of Jerusalem, though already strongly organized, was compelled to disperse. The apostles, according to a principle, which seems to have seized stronghold of their minds, did not quit the city. It was probably so too, with the whole purely Jewish group, those who were denominated the Hebrews. But the great community, with its common table, its diagonal services, its varied exercises, seized from that time, and was never reformed upon its first model. It had endured for three or four years. It was, for nascent Christianity, an unequaled good fortune that its first attempts at association, essentially communistic, were so soon broken up. Essays of this kind engender such shocking abuses that communistic establishments are condemned to crumble away in a very short time, or to ignore very soon the principle upon which they are founded. Thanks to the persecution of the year 37, the Cenobitic Church of Jerusalem was saved from the test of time. It was nipped in the bud before interior difficulties had undermined it. It remained like a splendid dream, the memory of which, animated in their life of trial, all those who had formed part of it, like an ideal to which Christianity incessantly aspires, without ever succeeding in reaching its goal. The leading part in the persecution we have just related, belonged to that young soul, whom we have above, found abetting, as far as in him lay the murder of Stephen. This hot-headed youth, furnished with the permission from the priests, entered houses suspected of harboring Christians, laid violent hold on men and women, and dragged them to prison or before the tribunals. Soul boasted that there was no one of his generation so zealous as himself for the traditions. True it is that often the gentleness and the resignation of the victims astonished him. He experienced a kind of remorse. He fancied he heard these pious women, whom hoping for the kingdom of God, he had cast into prison, saying during the night in a sweet voice, Why persecutist though us? The blood of Stephen, which had almost smothered him, sometimes troubled his vision. Many things that he had heard said of Jesus went to his heart. This superhuman being, in his ethereal life, whence he sometimes emerged, revealing himself in brief apparitions, haunted him like a specter, but soul shrunk with horror from such thoughts. He confirmed himself with a sort of frenzy in the faith of his traditions, and meditated new cruelties against those who attacked him. His name had become a terror to the faithful. They dreaded at his hands the most atrocious outrages and the most sanguinary treacheries. The persecution of the year 37 had for its result, as is always the case, the spread of the doctrine which it was wished to arrest. Till now the Christian preaching had not extended far beyond Jerusalem. No mission had been undertaken. Enclosed within its exalted but narrow communion, the mother church had spread no halos round herself, nor formed any branches. The dispersion of the little circle scattered the good seed to the four winds of heaven. The members of the church of Jerusalem, driven violently from their quarters, spread themselves over every part of Judea and Samaria, and preached everywhere the kingdom of God. The deacons in particular, freed from their administrative functions by the destruction of the community, became excellent evangelists. The scene of the first mission, which was soon to embrace the whole basin of the Mediterranean, was the region about Jerusalem, within a radius of two or three days journey. Philip the deacon was the hero of this first holy expedition. He evangelized Samaria most successfully. Peter and John, after confirming the church of Sebast, departed again for Jerusalem, evangelizing on their way the villages of the country of Samaria. Philip the deacon continued his evangelizing journeys, directing his steps towards the south, into the ancient country of the Philistines. Azote and the Gaza route were the limits of the first evangelical preachings toward the south. Beyond were the desert and the nomadic life, upon which Christianity has never taken much hold. From Azote Philip the deacon turned toward the north and evangelized all the coast as far as Caesarea, where he settled and founded an important church. Caesarea was a new city and the most considerable of Judea. It was in a kind of way the port of Christianity, the point by which the church of Jerusalem communicated with all the Mediterranean. Many other missions, the history of which is unknown to us, were conducted simultaneously with that of Philip. The very rapidity with which this first preaching was done was the reason of its success. In the year 38, 5 years after the death of Jesus, and probably one year after the death of Stephen, all this side of Jordan had heard the glad tidings from the mouth of missionaries hailing from Jerusalem. Galilei on its part guarded the holy seed and probably scattered it around her, although we know of no mission issuing from that quarter. Perhaps the city of Damascus from the period at which we are now had also some Christians who received the faith from Galilean preachers. The year 38 is marked in the history of the nascent church by a much more important conquest. During that year we may safely place the conversion of that soul, whom we witnessed participating in the stoning of Stephen, and as a principal agent in the persecution of 37, but who now, by a mysterious act of grace, becomes the most ardent of the disciples of Jesus. From the year 38 to the year 44 no persecution seems to have been directed against the church. The faithful were no doubt far more prudent than before the death of Stephen and avoided speaking in public. Perhaps two, the troubles of the Jews, who, during all the second part of the reign of Caligula, were at variance with that prince, contributed to favor the nascent sect. This period of peace was fruitful in interior developments. The nascent church was divided into three provinces, Judea, Samaria, Galilee, to which Damascus was no doubt attached. The primacy of Jerusalem was uncontested. The church of the city, which had been dispersed after the death of Stephen, was quickly reconstituted. The apostles had never quitted the city. The brothers of the Lord continued to reside there and to wield a great authority. Peter undertook frequent apostolic journeys in the environs of Jerusalem. He had always a great reputation as a Thaumaturgeist. At Lida in particular, he was reputed to have cured a paralytic named Aeneas, a miracle which is said to have led to numerous conversions in the Plain of Saron. From Lida he repaired to Joppa, a city which appears to have been a center for Christianity. Peter made a long-sought journey at Joppa, at the house of a tanner named Simon, who dwelt near the sea. The organization of works of charity was soon actively entered upon. The germ of those associations of women, which are one of the glories of Christianity, existed in the first churches of Judea. A Jaffa commenced those societies of veiled women, clothed in linen, who were destined to continue through centuries the tradition of charitable secrets. Tabitha was the mother of a family which will have no end as long as there are miseries to be relieved and feminine instincts to be gratified. The Church of Jerusalem was still exclusively composed of Jews and of proselytes. The Holy Ghost, being shed upon the uncircumcised before baptism, appeared an extraordinary fact. It is probable that there existed, thenceforward, a party opposed in principle to the admission of Gentiles, and that all did not accept the explanations of Peter. The author of the acts would have us believe that the approbation was unanimous, but in a few years we shall see the question revived with much greater intensity. This matter of the Good Centurion was, perhaps, like that of the Ethiopian eunuch, accepted as an exceptional case, justified by a revelation and an express order from God. Still, the matter was far from being settled. This was the first controversy which had taken place in the bottom of the Church. The paradise of interior peace had lasted for six or seven years. About the year 40, the great question upon which depended all the future of Christianity appears thus to have been propounded. Peter and Philip took a very just view of what was the true solution and baptized pagans. The new faith was spread from place to place with marvelous rapidity. The members of the Church of Jerusalem, who had been dispersed immediately after the death of Stephen, pushing their conquest along the coast of Phoenicia, reached Cyprus and Antioch. They weren't first guided by the sole principle of preaching the Gospel to the Jews only. Antioch, the metropolis of the East, the third city of the world, was the center of this Christian movement in northern Syria. It was a city with a population of more than 500,000 souls, and the residence of the imperial legate of Syria. Suddenly advanced to a high degree of splendor by the Seleucidae, it tripped great benefit from the Roman occupation. Antioch, from its foundation, had been wholly a Grecian city. The Macedonians of Antigone and Seleucus had brought with them into that country of the lower Orontes, their most lively recollections, their worship, and the names of their country. The Grecian mythology was there adopted as it were in a second home. They pretended to show in the country a crowd of holy places, forming part of this mythology. The city was full of the worship of Apollo and of the Nymphs. The degradation of the people was awful. The peculiarity of these centers of moral putrefaction is to reduce all the race of mankind to the same level. The depravity of certain Levantine cities, which are dominated by the spirit of intrigue and delivered up entirely to low cunning, can scarcely give us an idea of the degree of corruption reached by the human race at Antioch. It was an inconceivable medley of mountbugs, quacks, buffoons, magicians, miracle mongers, sorcerers, false priests, a city of races, games, dances, processions, fat, revels of unbridled luxury, of all the follies of the east, of the most unhealthy superstitions, and of the fanaticism of the orgy. The city was very literary, but literary only in the literature of returations. The beauty of works of art and the infinite charm of nature prevented this moral degradation from sinking entirely into hideousness and vulgarity. The Church of Antioch owed its foundation to some believers originally from Cyprus and Kyrene, who had already been much engaged in preaching. Up to this time they had only addressed themselves to the Jews. But in a city where pure Jews, Jews who were proselytes, people fearing God, or half Jewish pagans and pure pagans, lived together, exclusive preaching restricted to a group of houses became impossible. That feeling of religious aristocracy on which the Jews of Jerusalem so much prided themselves did not exist in those large cities, where civilization was altogether of the profane sort, where the scope was greater, and where prejudices were less firmly rooted. The Cypriot and Kyrenian missionaries were then constrained to depart from their rule. They preached to the Jews and to the Greeks indifferently. The success of the Christian preaching was great. A young, innovating and ardent Church, full of the future, because it was composed of the most diverse elements, was quickly founded. All the gifts of the Holy Spirit were there poured out. And it was easy to perceive that this new Church emancipated from the strict Mosaism, which erected an insurmountable barrier around Jerusalem, would become the second cradle of Christianity. Assuredly, Jerusalem must remain forever the capital of the Christian world. Nevertheless, the point of departure of the Church of the Gentiles, the primordial focus of Christian missions was in truth Antioch. It was there that for the first time a Christian Church was established, freed from the bonds of Judaism. It was there that the great propaganda of the Apostolic Age was established. It was there that St. Paul assumed a definite character. Antioch marks the second halting place of the progress of Christianity. And in respect of Christian nobility, neither Rome nor Alexandria nor Constantinople can be at all compared with it. The foundation of Christianity from this point of view is the greatest work that the men of the people have ever achieved. Very quickly, without doubt, men and women of the High Roman nobility joined themselves to the Church. At the end of the first century, Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilia show us Christianity penetrating almost into the Palace of the Caesars. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Great Events by Famous Historians Volume 3, edited by Charles F. Horn, Rossiter Johnson, and John Roode. The Rise and Spread of Christianity, AD 33 by Isaac M. Wise, Part 1. In the rabbinical literature, several successes of the Apostles are noticed, especially at Capernaum and Capersamia. One of them is most remarkable. This is the conversion of Rabbi Eliezer Ben Herken by the Apostle James. This Rabbi, the Talmud Narrates, was actually arrested by Roman officers, and in obedience to the edict against Christianity was accused of the crime of being a Christian which he did not deny although he repented it. The most important success, however, which the Apostles could boast, was the conversion of Paul. The man, whose colossal genius and gigantic energies grasped the pillars upon which the superstructure of Greco-Roman paganism rested, bent and broke them like rotten staves, till, with a thundering noise down came the ancient fabric with its gods, altars, temples, priests and priestesses, depositing debris that took centuries to remove and remodel. The man, whose hands were against all, and against whom were all hands, who defied the philosophy of the philosophers, the power of the priests and the religions of the world, who was all alone, all in all. This man was Paul of Tarsus, the great apostle to the Gentiles, with an original gospel of his own. He kindled a fire in the very heart of the Roman Empire, under the eyes of the authorities of Rome and of Jerusalem, which, in a few centuries, consumed ancient heathenism from the Tigris to the Tiber and from the Tiber to the Thames. With a skillful hand, he threw the sparks upon the accumulated combustibles of error, corruption and slavery, and ancient society exploded to make room and furnish the material for a new civilization. The conversion of this man was the apostle's great success. If it had not been for him, the national church, like other Jewish sects, would have perished in the catastrophe of Jerusalem, because the apostles did not possess that vigor and energy to resist the violent shock. In Paul, however, the spirit of John and of Jesus resurrected with double vigor, and he became the actual founder of the Christianity of history. Few and far apart are the brilliant stars in the horizon of history. Strike out a hundred names and their influence upon the fate of man, and you have no history. Those brilliant stars, however, did not always make history from their own wealth, from the original resources of their minds. Ideas which tens of thousands have held without an attempt to carry them into effect, and others have unsuccessfully attempted to realize, in the right time and under favorable circumstances, are seized upon by an executive genius and a new epic in history is opened. The numerous minor spirits which contributed to the sum total of the creative idea disappear in the brilliancy of the one star which remains visible in history. The world is a machine shop. Each artificer makes the part of a machine. One master mind combines the parts and he is known as the master machinist. Paul was one of those master machinists, one of those brilliant stars in the horizon of history. In him, the spirit of Jesus resurrected as eminently and vigorously as John had resurrected in Jesus. He was the author of Gentile Christianity. He conceived the idea of carrying into effect what all the prophets, all pious Israelites of all ages hoped and expected, the de-nationalization of the Hebrew ideas and their promulgation in the form of universal religion among the Gentiles, to conciliate and unite the human family under the great banner inscribed with the motto of One God and One Code of Morals to all. All Jews of all ages hoped and expected that the kingdom of heaven should be extended to all nations and tongues, but Paul went forth to do it. This is his particular greatness. The circumstances, of course, favored his enterprise. Greco-Roman paganism was undermined. The gods stood in disrepute and the augurs smiled. The state religion was an organized hypocrisy. The learned believed nothing, the vulgar almost everything, if it was but preposterously absurd enough. The progress of Grecian philosophy and the inroads of Judaism in the Roman world were so considerable that royal families had embraced Judaism and the emperor Tiberius had found it necessary to drive the Jews together with the Egyptian priests from Rome because their religion had its admirers in the very palace of the Caesars as well as among priests, nobles and plebeians. All the devout Gentiles whom Paul met on his journeys were Judaized Greeks or Syrians for the Pharisees traversed land and sea to make one proselyte. Therefore, when Paul preached in Asia Minor, Cicero and Cato had spoken in Rome. Seneca and Epictetus gave utterance to sentiments as nearly like those of Paul and other Jews as are the two eyes of the same head. Again, on the other hand, Epicurism in its worst sequences, Sensualism in its most outrageous form, the despotism and brutality of the Caesars and their favorites had so undermined the moral sentiments and religious feelings of the masses that skepticism fraught with shocking vices and unnatural crimes coupled with contemptible hypocrisy and ridiculous superstition demoralized the masses and brought truth itself into ill repute. To add to all this, there came the steady decline of the Jewish state, the growing demonstration of fast approaching ruin and, in consequence thereof, the growth of superstition among the Hebrews, among whom a class of mystics sprang up, who professed to know what God and his angels do, speak and think in the secret cabinet of heaven, where the throne of the Almighty stands splendidly and minutely described by those mystics as opposed that they received superior knowledge by special impressions from on high without study or research on their part and expected to see the status of social and political affairs suddenly changed by miraculous interpositions of the deity without human exertion and cooperation. This state of affairs was highly favorable to Paul's stupendous enterprise. But who was Paul himself? Notwithstanding all the attempts of the author of the Acts to mystify him into as mythical a character as the Gospels made of Jesus, Paul is an open book in history. We have his genuine epistles, in which he gives considerable account of himself and his exploits. We have one portion of the Acts in which, contrary to the rest of that book, the author narrates in the first person plural, we, which appears to be taken from the notes of one of Paul's companions, Luke, Timothy, Silas, or any other. Then we have the Talmud, with its numerous anecdotes about Akker, as the rabbis called Paul, which are of inestimable value to the historian. These sources enable us to form a conception of the man. A few remarks on his life will be found interesting. Paul is not a proper name. It signifies the little one. The author of the Acts states that his name was Saul, but it appears he knew no more about it than we do and changed the P of Paul into an S to make of it the Hebrew name Saul. In his epistles he invariably calls himself Paul and not Saul. So the author of the we portion of the Acts always calls him Paul. Passing under an assumed name, the rabbis called him Akker, another, i.e. one who passes under another or assumed name. They maintain that his name was Alicia Ben Aboujan, but this name must be fictitious because it is a direct and express reference to Paul's theology. It signifies the saving deity son of the Father God, and Paul was the author of the Son of God doctrine. The fact is he was known to the world under his assumed name only. Nothing is known of his youth except a few spurious anecdotes recorded in the Talmud. When quite young he studied the law and some Grecian literature at the feet of Gamaliel in Jerusalem among the thousand students who listened to the wisdom of that master. He states that he was a very zealous Pharisee who persecuted the Christians, but all of a sudden he embraced the cause of the persecuted and became one of its most zealous apostles. We can easily imagine the nature of that persecution although the Stephen story like the Damascus story and the vision on the way, as narrated in the Acts, is spurious because Paul never alludes to it and the Jews of Jerusalem had no jurisdiction in Damascus over anybody. But what caused his remarkable transition from one extreme to the other? First a Pharisee with law and nothing but law and then the author of the epistles which reject and abrogate the entire law. Transitions of this nature require time and are wrought by violent agencies only. The number of stories narrated in the Talmud together with those of the Acts point to the fact that the youthful Paul, with his vivid imagination, witnessed many an act of barbarous violence and outrageous injustice. Occurrences of this nature were not rare under the military despotism of Rome in Judea. The soil was saturated with innocent blood. The world was governed by the sword and Rome groaned under the unnatural crimes of her Caesars. There was universal depravity among the governing class and endless misery among the governed. The rabbis give us to understand that this state of affairs misled Paul into the belief that there was no justice in heaven or earth, no hope for Israel, no reward and no punishment that the balance of justice was destroyed. It is quite natural that under such circumstances such a skepticism should overpower young and sensitive reasoners. King Saul, in a state of despair, receiving no reply from the prophets, none from the Urim and Thumim, deeply fallen as he was, went in disguise to the Witch of Endor. Gotha's Faust, in imitation thereof, receiving no answer to his questions addressed to heaven and eternity, no answer through his knowledge of nature's laws and nature's forces, no answer from the philosophy of his century and the theology of his priests, throws himself into the embrace of Mephistopheles. That is human nature. Exactly the same thing was done in the days of Paul and exactly the same thing he himself did. There was the indescribable misery of the age and there were the knowledge and theories of that overburdened century and no answer, no reply to the questions addressed to heaven and eternity and they went to the fountains of mysticism and secret knowledge to quench the thirst of the soul. There sprung up the visionary nostics among the Gentiles and the cabalistic mystics among the Jews. History notices the same rotation continually, idealism, sensualism, skepticism and finally mysticism. The mystic art among the Hebrews then was of two different kinds, either to attract an evil spirit or to be transported alive into paradise or heaven. An evil spirit was attracted by fasting and remaining for days and nights alone in burial grounds till the brain was maddened and infatuated when the artificial demoniac prophesied and performed sundry miracles. The transportation to heaven or paradise was more difficult. The candidate for a tour into heaven would retire to some isolated spot, fast until the brain was maddened with delirium and the nerves excited to second sight by the loss of sleep. Then in that state of trance he would sit down on the ground, draw up his knees, bend down his head between them and murmur magic spells until, through the reverse circulation of the blood, the maddened brain and the unstrung nerves, he would imagine that he saw the heaven opening to his inspection, palace after palace, thrown widely open to his gaze, hosts of angels passing within view, until finally he imagined himself entirely removed from the earth, transported aloft into those diamond palaces on high or, as Paul calls it, caught up into paradise, where he heard unspeakable words which it is not possible for a man to utter, and the throne of God, with all the seraphim and cherubim, archangels and angels became visible and their conversation intelligible to the enraptured and transported mystic in a fit of hallucination when the bewildered imagination sees objectively its own subjective phantasma and hears from without, in supposed articulate sounds, its own silent thoughts. It requires no stretch of the imagination to form a correct idea of the mystic eccentricities to which this awful practice must have led those who frequently indulged in it. Rabbinical mystics like modern trance speakers gave vivid descriptions of the interior splendor and grand sceneries of heaven and of the conversations of angels. One of those descriptions is preserved in Perk Rabbi Elysir and others in various fragments of the Talmud. Among those particularly noticed in the Talmud as having been in heaven or paradise, there is also Akker or Paul who states so himself in his second epistle to the Corinthians 12. That passage gave rise to the story of Jesus appearing in person to Paul just as the rabbinical mystics claimed to have had frequent intercourse with the prophet Elijah who had been transported alive to heaven. So Paul passed the transition from the law school of the Pharisees to the new school of mystics. In this state of trance he discovered that central figure of the cabalistic speculation, the metathron, the co-regent of the Almighty, or as he otherwise was called, the synodelfos, the confreur of the deity, or Suriel, the prince of the countenance, whom the cabalists imagined to be the chief marshal or chief scribe in heaven, who was once on earth, as Inak or as Elijah, and was advanced to that high position in heaven. It is the Demiurge, the highest magistrate in heaven, whom the Gnostic Valentine calls a god-like angel and of whom the rabbis said, his name is like unto the name of his master. This central figure, blended with the messianic speculations of that age with the doctrines of Peter and the nascent church, combined in Paul's mind to one mystic conception of the Son of God, intelligible to pagan ears. So he went forth and proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God. In substance the expression is about the same as metathron and synodelfos and the office which Paul ascribed to Jesus is precisely of the same nature with that which the cabalists ascribed to the angel who was the Sahr Haulam, the prince or ruler of this world, who stands before God or also sits before him as Paul's Jesus stands before God or sits at his right hand. It is precisely the same in both systems. The names only are changed so that it is difficult to decide whether Paul was or the rabbis were the authors of the metathronic speculations, especially as these two angels only have Greek names while all others are Hebrew or Chaldean and later cabalists frequently put down Joshua or Jesus in the place of metathron. Those who believe that Akker's dualism of the deity was the Persian or Muzd and Ahraman, hence a good and an evil principle and that metathron never was an evil demon are as decidedly mistaken as those who believe that Paul had more than one God. Paul's Son of God and Akker's metathron are the same central figure before the throne of God and the two authors are identical. In that world of secret thoughts Paul discovered the harmonization of discordant speculations and the remedy for all existing evils. The world must be regenerated by a new religion was his great ideal. The ancient religions and the philosophies have produced the corruption which rages universally. They must be swept away. Society must be reconstructed on a new basis and this basis is in the theology and ethics of Israel separated and liberated from their climatical and national limitations, their peculiar Jewish garb. There was no hope left of saving the Jewish nationality and political organization from the hands of omnipotent Rome which swallowed and neutralized kingdoms and nations with wonderful ease nor was there any particular necessity for it if society at large was reconstructed on the new basis. The object of Jesus was to reconstruct the kingdom of heaven in Israel and he was crucified. All Israel had the same object in view and stood at the brink of dissolution. If the basis and principles of the kingdom of heaven became the postulate of society at large, Jesus is resurrected in the world and Israel is saved was Paul's main idea. The Pharisee and rabbis hoped that this would come to pass at some future day when they maintained all sacrifices and all laws would be abolished and all the nations of the earth would be one family with one God and one moral law. Paul seized upon the idea and added to it the simple dogma of Peter the Messiah has come. That hoped for future is now. God's promise to Abraham and there shall be blessed by thee and by thy seed all the families of the earth is to be fulfilled at once. So he came forth from his mystical paradise an apostle of Jesus and a new redeemer of Israel. He argued exactly as the Pharisee and doctors did who maintained that the Messiah would come when all mankind should be guilty or all righteous. In the estimation of Paul at that particular time all mankind was corrupt and demoralized so that was the time for the Messiah to make his appearance. He went to work at once. He began to preach his new Christianity at Damascus about the year 51 and found out that the world was not prepared for his ideas. He had a narrow escape at Damascus where the governor and soldiers pursued him. Like the spies at Jericho he was let down in a basket over the city walls and made his escape. So he narrates the story. The author of the Acts, true to his hostility to the Jews of course brings them in as the persecutors. But Paul in general never speaks otherwise than with the highest regard and love of his kinsmen and his brothers according to the flesh. The failure at Damascus did not discourage Paul. It only convinced him that he was too young. He could not at that time have been much over twenty-one years that he was not sufficiently prepared for the great enterprise that it was not such an easy task to throw down the superannuated heathenism and to reorganize society on a new basis. He retired into Arabia and remained there nearly three years to perfect a plan of operation. Nearly three years he spent in silent contemplation to discover the proper means to take the right hold upon the heathen world and to unfurl a new banner of heaven upon this wicked earth. In fifty-three or fifty-four we meet him again at Antioch with his new and original gospel, the gospel for the Gentiles, prepared for his mission and ready to embark in the great enterprise to wage active war upon all existing systems of religion and philosophy and to replace all of them by Paul's gospel. He had been in Jerusalem fifteen days, had conversed with Peter and nobody else, but he repeatedly tells us that he had taken advice of none, consulted none, was appointed by nobody and learned nothing of anybody. The gospel was his gospel and he was an apostle by the appointment of God Almighty Himself who had revealed his Son to him. In Antioch he established the first congregation of Jews and Gentiles and called them Christians. So Paul was the actual author of Christianity among the Gentiles. What was Paul's gospel? Paul, setting out on his journeys with the great idea of converting heathens, was obliged to paganize the gospel. The heathens knew nothing of the Jewish Messiah and he gave him the name popularly known among them. He called him the Son of God, which was a common name in mythology. The Son of God and Mary was a term as popular among heathens as it was foreign to the Jews, among whom Jesus was to remain the Messiah, only that he became also the Metathron. This explained to Jewish mystics the possibility of the second advent and gave a metaphysical foundation to the resurrection doctrine. The Kingdom of Heaven or the Theocracy was another unintelligible idea to the heathen. Israel's laws and form of government were as odious and decried among the pagans as the hostility to that people was fierce and implacable. Paul made thereof a theological Kingdom of Heaven when all the dead shall resurrect in spiritual bodies and the living shall be changed accordingly together with this earth and all that is thereon and declared all the laws of Israel abrogated so that only the spirit thereof, the precepts and not the laws, should be obligatory in the new state of society. The sins and wickedness of the world are forgiven to all who believe in the Son and whose flesh is crucified with him to resurrect with him in purity for he died a vicarious atonement for all. He was the last sacrifice to blot out the sins of all who have faith in him. The crucified one did not resurrect merely in the spirit of which the heathens could not form a satisfactory conception because the immortality of the soul was by no means a general belief among them and their gods were no spirits. He resurrected in his very body and was caught up to Heaven to sit or stand there at God's right hand to come down again in proper time. Here, then, is your tangible proof of immortality he said to the heathens. Like the crucified one all of you will resurrect from the dead or be changed on the day of judgment. This was plain language to heathens. Who knew that but lately Caesar had been caught up to Heaven as Romulus was before him and asked no questions as to how a human body can rise in the atmosphere and become incorruptible. None as to what means above or below up or down as to where God is and where he is not where his right hand where before and where behind him or as to whether the world is full of his glory. No such questions were asked and there was the ocular demonstration of immortality tangible and intelligible to the grossest intellect. End of Section 7 Recording by Linda Johnson Section 8 of The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 3 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 3 edited by Charles F. Horn, Rossiter Johnson, and John Roode. The Rise and Spread of Christianity A.D.33 by Isaac M. Wise Part 2 The Jewish nationality and the Jewish law are at their end and the world is the heir to that covenant and to the blessing of God by Abraham and his seed. With the new covenant the old one ceases. It has fulfilled its destiny. It was a state of preparation for this period of universal salvation to all who have love, hope, and faith. With Adam and the flesh came the sin, law, and death. With Jesus the flesh ceases, hence no more sin, law, or death. These are the main features of Paul's gospel. The Son of God the theological kingdom of heaven the vicarious atonement the bodily resurrection of the crucified one the abrogation of the law and the beginning of the new covenant. He was the first man to utter these doctrines. With him Christianity begins and he named it. But Paul knew well that doctrines alone would be insufficient to rouse the heathen world from its demoralized state its dreary and stupid dreams and he resorted to the most terrible and most shocking of all messages. He came to the heathens with the terror-striking proclamation the end is nigh the whole earth with all the creatures thereon the whole human family with all its wickedness all its atrocious crimes will be destroyed in one moment all of you, men women and children with all your vices and crimes will be suddenly summoned before the eternal and all just you have to go all of you and appear before the omniscient God the end is nigh the destruction of the human family is certain and right before you it will come soon it may come any day at any moment now Paul's gospel came in here is your choice there are death and damnation here are life and happiness everlasting God has sent his son in advance of the approaching catastrophe to warn you and he is appointed now to conduct the end of all flesh cling to him and be saved or believe not and be condemned forever so he came to the heathens this was his gospel how did he succeed we will explain after a brief pause all passages in the gospels and the acts which have reference to the above Christology to the end of things or against it in which the synoptics most fatally contradict one another are the products of writers long after Paul when the attempts to reconcile Jewish and Gentile Christianity were made for with Paul begins the new form of Christianity and the struggle with the representatives of the old form within ten years he traversed the land from Antioch to Athens in three different journeys and established his bishopric the first Christian congregations among the Gentiles he organized them fully with deacons and deaconesses preachers and prophets and he was their bishop their oracle their revelation and their demigod to let his converts believe that they could do wonderful things in healing the sick driving out demons prophesying and speaking with strange tongues because it served his purposes although he did none of these things he gave them the Holy Ghost i.e. he regenerated their feelings and pacified their stormy passions suppressed their brutal lusts and elevated their aspirations to higher ideals he did not feel that sovereign contempt for money which the master did whom he glorified for he like the other apostles took his pay and argued with the Corinthians like a good Pharesean lawyer that bishops and preachers must be paid an argument well understood by the dignitaries of the church to this day and indeed is the progress which Paul made among the Gentiles in ten years like a pillar of fire he traversed the deserts of heathenism like a second Elijah he battled against the priests and prophets of Baal and conjured down the fire from heaven to his assistance within ten years he laid the foundation of a new civilization of the reorganization of society on the new basis he did not live to see it realized but he saw the new system take root and promise golden fruit wonderful we maintain was his success for he was not only opposed by the entire heathen world and by the orthodox Jews although he proclaimed their god and their doctrines their religion and their hopes but was also most strenuously opposed by the apostles and the nascent congregation in Jerusalem whose master he glorified and whose cause he made the cause of the world the dissensions between Paul and the apostles were of a very serious character and there was ample cause for them in the first place he took it upon himself to be an apostle and they had their college of twelve to which none could be added especially not Paul who had never seen Jesus of Nazareth he maintained that god had appointed him god had revealed his son and his gospel to him but the apostles did not believe it and never acknowledged him as an apostle at the end of his journeys Peter, James, and John three out of twelve acknowledged him as an apostle to the Gentiles not to the Jews the rest never did which of course was a great trouble and drawback to Paul among his own converts in the second place they could never forgive him for the idea of going to the Gentiles Peter who had become a pious Essen and considered it unlawful to go to the house or into the company of a Gentile James who dreaded the idea of eating bread of the Gentile and made a hypocrite in this point of Peter at Antioch and they were the heads of the church could not forgive Paul's innovation in going to the Gentiles Paul was sensible enough to silence them by begging money for them and to appoint the Sunday for collections to be made for the saints of Jerusalem but it was too much for them that Paul went to the Gentiles in the third place he changed their whole religion into a new sort of mythology he made of Jesus a son of God of which they had no knowledge he preached vicarious atonement bodily resurrection the end of the old covenant and the beginning of anew the end of all flesh the last judgment all of which was foreign to them not one word of all that had their master told them and they knew only what he did tell them they naturally looked upon him as an unscrupulous innovator they had not experience and forethought enough to understand that Paul's success among the heathens depended on that means they were pious men who prayed much believed seriously and had no knowledge of the world as it was in the fourth place they could not possibly give their consent to Paul's abrogation of the whole law knowing as they did how their master respected every tittle every iota of the law that he had come to fulfill the law and to re-establish the theocracy how could they possibly think of the idea of abolishing Sabbath and holidays circumcision and ablutions all and everything to be guided by the phantom of hope love and faith against which James argues in his epistle with all the energy of his soul those inexperienced saints did not know that the Pharesean doctors held similar theories and that Paul could not possibly hope to meet with any success among the Gentiles if he had come to them with the laws of the Jews they were Roman citizens who condemned the laws of the barbarians had Paul come with the word Judaism on his lips he would have surely failed had he come to enforce a foreign law he would have been laughed at as a madman they did not know that Paul cared not for 101 laws as long as the essence and substance could be saved and preserved that he held that laws are local the spirit is universal that laws are limitations the spirit is free and the property of all men of all ages and climes that he was determined to drop everything which could retard his progress in the fifth place and this was the worst they could not forgive him for preaching the theological kingdom of heaven a kingdom of Israel a throne of David a Davidian prince a Zion and a Jerusalem in heaven and slavery, misery and oppression on earth was so new and foreign to them so contrary to what they had heard from their master that they could not accept it what should become of Peter's Messiah of the hopes and promises connected with the second advent if all at once the whole scheme is transported to heaven it was too much disappointment they could not endure it those men did not understand that Paul had carefully to avoid every conflict with the Roman authorities he was too prudent to be crucified they could not comprehend that his great object was not to remove the evil at once he intended to sow the seed to bring forth the plant to give to the heathens correct notions of God duty, responsibility purity, holiness morality, justice humanity and freedom which in proper time should necessarily break the chains revolutionize the sentiments and elevate the views hopes, aspirations and designs of the nations they could not comprehend that their Messiah and kingdom of heaven together with his terrible message of the end of all flesh and the last judgment day were means and nothing but means to captivate and reform the heathen his son of God was crucified and resurrected from the dead to forewarn all of the approaching end of all flesh to show that in a little while all the dead should resurrect should be changed to spiritual beings he had been given all power by the almighty to conduct the catastrophe of the world and would be present at the last judgment day but after all that is over the earthen man changed to a new state of spiritual life then the son of God returns the kingdom to the father and God will be again all in all so the son of God was a general superintendent the demiurge for the time being a doctrine of which the apostles had no knowledge and to which they could not give their consent he could not get them to understand that these were the means for the conversion of the Gentiles and that he had quite another gospel for the enlightened portion of the community they could not see that the Christians used to apotheosis man worship and plastic gods ideas to become effective must put on concrete and tangible bodies they could not imagine that the sensuality and corruption of the age required heroic and terror striking means to rouse and to move the masses and so the dissensions and troubles between Paul and the nascent church increased with the success of Paul among the Gentiles his epistles one and all are polemics not against heathenism or against Judaism but against his colleagues in Jerusalem whom together with their doctrines he treats in a most reckless manner they could not write to counterbalance Paul in fact there were no writers of any note among them therefore only one side of the polemics that of Paul is fully represented in the New Testament and the side of the Jewish Christians remained mostly matter of tradition messengers were sent to follow Paul to undo his gospel and preach that of the apostles to introduce the law and circumcision among the Gentile Christians those messengers in many cases succeeded notwithstanding the thundering epistles of Paul so his influence was weakened and his progress retarded among the Gentiles till finally after ten years of hard work he concluded upon going to Jerusalem and if possible effecting a compromise with the apostolic congregation it was a danger as time for him to go to Jerusalem for just then high priest Ananias had convened a court of his willing tools tried James the brother of Jesus and finding him guilty of what God only knows had him and some of his associates executed a bloody deed which cost him his office on account of the loud and emphatic protestations of the Jews before Agrippa II and the Roman governor therefore Paul was cautioned by prophets and friends not to go to Jerusalem but he was not the man to be frightened by dangers he was the very type of boldness and courage he went to Jerusalem to effect a conciliation with the church a synod met in the house of James the apostle who had succeeded the former James as head of the church and Paul was told to do that against which his conscience his honor his manhood must have revolted he was required to play the hypocrite in Jerusalem in order to pacify the brethren who were angry at him the thousands of Jews they said who were zealous for the law and were informed how Paul taught the people to forsake Moses to give up circumcision and the ancient customs present in Jerusalem the multitude must needs come together which points to the Jewish Christians faithful to the law therefore they advised him to go through the mockery of a purification at the temple to be at charges as they called it with some who had vowed a vow and make the prescribed sacrifices after the purification poor man after so much labor such ardent toils such numerous perils dangers anxieties trials after ten long years of such work and such dangers he is not safe in Jerusalem among his own kinsmen and among those whose master he glorified whose doctrines he taught and whose interests he protected how small must he have appeared to himself when walking up the temple mount in the company of the four men whose expenses he paid to be purified with them and all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning thee are nothing but that thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law the man who had defied a world to submit to the humbling dictation of his colleagues and his children in comparison with him this is mortifying to the utmost this is the time of which it is said in the Talmud that Paul or Ochre narrated that on passing behind the sanctum sanctorum he heard the buff-call or Holy Ghost exclaim return all ye forward children all return except Paul who has known me and rebelled against me Paul never forgot never forgave this humiliation it estranged his feelings altogether from his colleagues in Jerusalem and he embraced the first best opportunity to rid himself entirely of his Jewish associations the opportunity soon offered while near the temple some Jews from Asia Minor recognized him a disturbance ensued he was arrested and locked up in the castle by the Roman commander here the author of the acts brings in a terrible tumult speeches, trials a Jewish mob with a noble Roman stepping in in time to wind up dramatically not one word of which is historical Paul standing accused as the ringleader of the new sect who expected the second advent of the Messiah could only appear dangerous to the zealous and vigilant Roman authorities nothing else was necessary to put his life in jeopardy in the night he made up his mind to appeal to Caesar because he was a Roman citizen therefore he was sent to Caesarea to the governor under the protection of soldiers not a sound was heard in his favor among the Jewish Christians not an angel appeared not a solitary miracle was wrought none dreamed a dream nobody had a vision the Holy Ghost was as silent as the grave none of all the Christians in Palestine showed his face when Paul loaded with chains was transported from Jerusalem to Caesarea this silence speaks volumes they did not care much about the innovator therefore Paul's epistles from his prison in Caesarea are thunderbolts against the law circumcision and his colleagues in Jerusalem it is the offended man the wounded lion who retaliates in his anger in Caesarea another mock trial is described by the author of the acts there can be little doubt that Ananias the seducion high priest slaying James thirsted also after the blood of Paul but it is certainly not true that Felix was governor of Judea when Ananias was high priest Felix and Festus had been removed from their offices before Ananias was made high priest as the authentic sources of history show if tried at Caesarea at all which is doubtful because Paul had appealed to Caesar he was tried before albinus his speeches recorded in the acts contain sentences of Paul but many more additions from the author of the acts it matters little however whether Paul was tried before albinus or Felix or whether there was a trial at all he had appealed to Caesar in order to estrange himself from his colleagues in Jerusalem and to come before his converts as an expatriated man although a gripper himself had said this man might have been said at liberty had he not appealed unto Caesar fortunately he was detained in Caesarea when Nero in Rome put to death the Christians in his own gardens with exquisite cruelty and added mockery and derision to their sufferings had he been brought to Rome then no angels could have saved his life and no power could have protected him for two years he came to Rome in the year 65 when the cruelty of Nero's proceedings against the Christians filled every breast with compassion and humanity relented in favor of the Christians then it was possible for Paul to have a hearing in Rome where he lived in a hired house for two years neither Paul nor Peter was ever bishop of Rome nor was either of them beheaded in Rome or anywhere else all the legends and myths concerning them are void of truth we know that Paul who was then about 35 years old wrote from Rome epistles in defense of his gospel and against his colleagues in Jerusalem in the same spirit as those from Caesarea we know furthermore that he went from Rome to Illyricum where he preached his gospel we know that he returned to Asia and wrote the quintessence of his gospel in his epistle to the Romans we know that many passages in his epistles were written after the destruction of Jerusalem when Paul was about 40 years old and his principal activity commenced still later in opposition to Rabbi Acaba and his colleagues we know from the Talmud that he married and left daughters we know also numerous stories of Acre or Paul and his disciple Rabbi Mayer long after the death of the apostles the Christianity of Paul and the messiahism of Peter were platonized by the Alexandrian eclectics which gave birth to the fourth gospel according to John and the two epistles of John the Elder not the apostle about AD 160 of which the synoptics have no idea they had only the Christianity of Paul and of Peter before them an original Peter gospel Paul's epistles and the different traditions of the various congregations which they attempted to blend into one system all the gospel writers lived in the second century were not acquainted with the particulars of the story had an imperfect knowledge of the Jews, their laws and doctrines wrote in favor of the Romans whom they wished to convert and against the Jews whom they could not convert the third century inherited the same systems of Christianity that of Jesus with the pure theocracy that of Peter with the messiah and his second advent that of Paul with the son of God and the approaching end of all flesh and that of John with the logos and the self-aggrandizing demigod or man-god on earth the difficulties and dissensions arising from the attempts at uniting all these contradictory systems in one ended with the council of Nice in the beginning of the fourth century and the establishment of an orthodox creed the excommunication of the Jewish Christians and the establishment of the church as a state institution then the sword and the pyre established doctrines on comparison you will find that Jesus became the savior of the Gentiles the resurrection of Paul that the means which Peter and Paul adopted for momentary purposes have been turned into main dogmas that the religion which Jesus taught and believed is partly laid aside and the rest is unimportant in Christology but he himself has been adopted in place of his religion and that the entire New Testament has no knowledge of the Trinity and the orthodox creed on comparison you will discover that if any of our modern congregations are Christian the apostolic congregation of Jerusalem was heretic if the Pope is a Christian Paul was not if the orthodox creed tells what one must believe in order to be a Christian then Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew if the religion and the theocracy which Jesus preached are to become the universal religion all dogmas must fall and God alone be all in all man must become his own priest prince and prophet justice must govern the nations love must construe the law virtue and righteousness must lead to satisfaction and happiness and man's consciousness of God immortality morals and moral responsibility must be his catechism his guiding star his protecting angel in life and death no dogmas truth in the name of God I see it although it is not now I behold it although it is not nigh a star will arise from Jacob in whose soft brilliancy will shine forth all the great and redeeming truth freedom and humanity justice and love in the name of God are the right religion to strive for them is divine worship to love them is holiness this was the object of Paul the means to accomplish that object were the necessities of the age to convert that generation he could not dream of the idea that the means would obscure the object that the servant would occupy the master's seat his was a fearless powerful and unyielding character terribly in earnest to break down the ancient world and create a new one and his success though incomplete was wonderful men like Jesus and Paul whose great aim was to benefit and to elevate human nature however widely we may differ from them deserve the students laborious research the philanthropists most profound admiration the monuments which the human mind rears to their memory great works are the testimony of their authors and great minds are the diadem and honor the ornament and pride of human nature the God Jesus and the supernatural Paul appear small in the focus of reason the patriotic and enthusiastic Jesus and the brave bold, wise and mighty Paul are grand types of humanity among those hundred stars in the horizon of history which have made the history of the human family end of section 8 recording by Linda Johnson