II. Paul sent to Cæsarea. Felix. BOOK guard to Cæsarea, the residence of the Roman provincial governor, the dissolute and tyrannical Felix. The Sanhedrin pursued their hated adversary to the tribunal of the Governor, but with Felix Paul before they possessed no commanding influence. A hired orator, whom from his name we may conjecture to have been a Roman, employed perhaps according to the usage, which provided that all legal proceedings should be conducted in the Latin language, appeared as their advocate before the tribunal.* But the defence of Paul against the charge of sedition, of innovation, and the profanation of the Temple, was equally successful with Felix, who was well acquainted with the Jewish character, and by no means disposed to lend himself to their passions and animosities. The charge therefore was dismissed. Paul, though not set at liberty, was allowed free intercourse with his Christian brethren; Felix himself even condescended to hear, and heard not without emotion, the high moral doctrines of St. Paul, which were so much at variance with his unjust and adulterous life. But it was not so much the virtue as the rapacity of Felix which thus inclined him to look with favour upon the Apostle: knowing probably the profuse liberality of the Christians, and their zealous attachment to their teacher, he expected that the liberty of Paul would be purchased at any price he might demand. For the two last years Paul in pri- therefore of the administration of Felix, Paul remained a prisoner; and Felix, at his departure, well son at Cæsarea. * Acts, xxiv. 1-26. II. aware that accusations were lodged against him by CHAP. the representatives of the Jewish nation, endeavoured to propitiate their favour by leaving him still in custody. Nor had the Jews lost sight of this great object of animosity. Before the new governor, Porcius Festus, a man of rigid justice, and less acquainted with the Jewish character, their charges were renewed with the utmost acrimony. On his first A. D. 58. visit to Jerusalem, the High Priest demanded that Paul should be sent back for trial before the Sanhedrin; and though Festus refused the petition till he should himself have investigated the case at Cæsarea, on his return he proposed that Paul should undergo a public examination at Jerusalem in his own presence. The design of the Jews was to surprise and assassinate the prisoner, and Paul, probably informed of their secret intentions, persisted in his appeal to Cæsar. To this appeal from a Roman citizen, the governor could not refuse his assent. The younger Agrippa had now returned from *There is great chronological difficulty in arranging this part of the administration of Felix. But the difficulty arises, not so much in harmonising the narrative of the Acts with the historians of the period, as in reconciling Josephus with Tacitus. Taking the account of Josephus, it is impossible to compress all the events of that part of the administration of Felix, which he places after the accession of Nero, into a single year. Yet he states that, on the recall of Felix, he only escaped punishment for his crimes through the interest of his brother, Pallas. Yet, according to Tacitus, the in fluence of Pallas with Nero ceased II. Agrippa. The BOOK Rome, where he had resided during his minority. He had succeeded to part only of his father's dominions; he was in possession of the Asmonean palace at Jerusalem, and had the right of appointing the High Priest, which he exercised apparently with all the capricious despotism of a Roman governor. He appeared in great pomp at Cæsarea, with his sister Bernice, on a visit to Festus. Roman governor appears to have consulted him, as a man of moderation and knowledge of the Jewish Paul before law, upon the case of Paul. The Apostle was summoned before him. The defence of Paul made a strong impression upon Agrippa, who, though not a convert, was probably from that time favourably disposed to Christianity. The appeal of Paul to the Emperor was irrevocable by an inferior authority; whether he would have preferred remaining in Judæa, after an acquittal from Festus, and perhaps under the protection of Agrippa, or whether to his own mind Rome offered a more noble and promising field for his Christian zeal, Paul, setting forth on his voyage, left probably for ever the land of his forefathers-that land beyond all others inhospitable to the religion of Christthat land which Paul, perhaps almost alone of Jewish descent, had ceased to consider the one narrow portion of the habitable world, which the love of the Universal Father had sanctified as the chosen dwelling of his people, as the future seat of dominion, glory, and bliss. Paul sent to Rome. The great object of Jewish animosity had escaped the hostility of the Sanhedrin; but an II. opportunity soon occurred of wreaking their CHAP. baffled vengeance on another victim, far less obnoxious to the general feelings even of the more bigoted among the Jews. The head of the Christian community in Jerusalem was James, whom Josephus himself, if the expression in that remarkable passage be genuine (which is difficult to believe), dignifies with the appellation of the brother of Jesus. On the death of Festus, and before the arrival of his successor Albinus, the High Priesthood was in the hands of Annas, or Ananus, the last of five sons of the former Annas, who had held that rank. Annas was the head of the Sadducaic party, and seized the opportunity of this suspension of the Roman authority, to reassert the power of the Sanhedrin over life and death. Many persons, whom it is impossible not to suppose Christians, were executed by the legal punishment of stoning. Among these, the head of the com- A. D. 62. munity was the most exposed to the animosity of the government, and therefore least escape in their day of temporary power. of the murder of St. James, at least of certain Martyrdom supposed offenders against the law, whom it is difficult not to identify with the Christians *, rests * Connecting this narrative of Josephus, even without admitting the authenticity of the passage about St. James, with the proceedings against St. Paul as related in the Acts, it appears to me highly improbable that, if Ananus put any persons to death for crimes against religion, they should have been any other than Chris likely to The fact tians. Who but Christians would of James. BOOK II. on the authority of the Jewish historian*: in the details which are related on the still more questionable testimony of Hegesippus †, we feel that we are passing from the clear and pellucid air of the apostolic history, into the misty atmosphere of legend. We would willingly attempt to disentangle the more probable circumstances of this impressive story from the embellishments of later moderate and peaceful part of the community. Lardner therefore appears to me in error, in admitting the prosecutions of Ananus, but disconnecting them from the Christian history. * Joseph. Ant. xx. 8.1. Lardner's Jewish Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 342. 4to. edit. + This narrative of Hegesippus has undergone the searching criticism of Scaliger in Chron. Euseb. and Le Clerc, Hist. Eccles. and Ars Critica; it has been feebly defended by Petavius, and zealously by Tillemont. Heinichen, the recent editor of Eusebius, seems desirous to trace some vestiges of truth. In these early forgeries it is not only interesting and important to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the traditions themselves, but the design and the authors of such pious frauds. This legend seems imagined in a spirit of Christian asceticism, endeavouring to conform itself to Jewish usage, of which nevertheless it betrays remarkable ignorance. It attributes to the Christian bishop the Nazaritish abstinence from the time of his birth, not only from wine, but, in the spirit of Budhism, from every thing which had life; the self-denial of the luxury of anointment with oil, with a monkish abhorrence of ablutions a practice positively commanded in the law, and from which no Jew abstained. It gives him the power of entering the Holy Place at all times, a practice utterly in opposition to the vital principles of Judaism, as he could not have been of the race of Aaron. It describes his kneeling till his knees were as hard as those of a camel-another indication of the growing spirit of monkery. We may add the injudicious introduction of the " Scribes and Pharisees," in the language of the gospel, as the authors of his fate; which, according to the more probable account of Josephus, and the change in the state of feeling in Jerusalem, was solely to be attributed to the Sadducees. The final improbability is the leading to the pinnacle of the Temple (a circumstance obviously borrowed from our Lord's temptation), a man who had been for years the acknowledged head of the Christian community in Jerusalem, that he might publicly dissuade the people from believing in Christ; still further his burial after such a death within the walls of the city, and close to the Temple: all these incongruities indicate a period at which Christianity had begun to degenerate into asceticism, and had been so long estranged from Judaism, as to be ignorant of its real character and usages. |