The Church Of Antioch then was in a somewhat anomalous condition. It contained a number of Greeks, who were in the position of “God-fearing proselytes,” but had not conformed to the entire law; and the question was still unsettled what was their status in the Church.
2. THE COMING OF BARNABAS AND THE SUMMONING OF SAUL.
(XI 22) AND THE REPORT CONCERNING THEM CAME TO THE EARS OF THE CHURCH IN JERUSALEM; AND THEY SENT FORTH BARNABAS AS FAR AS ANTIOCH: (23) WHO WHEN HE WAS COME, AND HAD SEEN THE GRACE OF GOD, WAS GLAD; AND HE EXHORTED THEM ALL THAT WITH PURPOSE OF HEART THEY SHOULD CLEAVE UNTO THE LORD (24) (FOR HE WAS A GOOD MAN, AND FULL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND OF FAITH); AND MUCH PEOPLE WAS ADDED UNTO THE LORD. (25) AND HE WENT FORTH TO TARSUS TO SEEK FOR SAUL; (26) AND WHEN HE HAD FOUND HIM, HE BROUGHT HIM UNTO ANTIOCH. AND IT CAME TO PASS THAT EVEN FOR A
1 οἰ ἐκ περιτομη, XI 2, Gal. II 12: “some of the sect of the Pharisees that believed,” XV 5.
SEC 2. The Coming of Barnabas.
WHOLE YEAR THEY MET IN THE ASSEMBLY, AND TAUGHT MUCH PEOPLE; AND THAT THE DISCIPLES WERE CALLED “CHRISTIANS” FIRST IN ANTIOCH.
As in previous cases, an envoy was sent from the Church in Jerusalem to survey this new congregation, and judge of its worthiness; and Barnabas was selected for the purpose. The same test that had been convincing in the case of Cornelius satisfied Barnabas in Antioch: he saw the grace of God. Then he proceeded to exhort and encourage them, which he was qualified to do because the Divine Spirit was in him. Sparing as Luke is of words, he feels bound to state that Barnabas was qualified by grace for the work (see p. 174). The result of his course of ministration was a great increase to the congregation.
Mindful of his former short experience of Saul, Barnabas bethought himself that he was well suited to the peculiar circumstances of the Antiochian congregation: and he accordingly went to Tarsus, and brought Saul back with him to Antioch. This journey must apparently have been made in the early months of A.D. 43; and the rest of that year was spent by the two friends in Antioch. The date shows that the early stages of Christian history in Antioch were slow. The congregation must have grown insensibly, and no marked event occurred, until the attention of the Church in Jerusalem was called to its existence. The one important fact about it was that it came into existence in this peculiar way. But with the advent of Barnabas and Saul, its history enters on a new phase. It became the centre of progress and of historical interest in the Church.
It lies in Luke’s style to give no reason why Barnabas summoned Saul to Antioch. This historian records the
1 παρεκάλει, imperfect.
The Church in Antioch. CHAP. III
essential facts as they occurred; but he does not obtrude on the reader his own private conception as to causes or motives. But we cannot doubt that Barnabas, who became Saul’s sponsor at Jerusalem (IX 27), and related to the Apostles the circumstances of his conversion, knew that God had already called him “to preach Him among the Gentiles” (Gal. I 16), and recognised that this congregation of the Gentiles was the proper sphere for Saul’s work. We find in Barnabas’s action the proof of the correctness of Paul’s contention in Epist. Gal., that his aim as an Apostle had been directed from the first towards the Gentiles; his sphere was already recognised.
As we shall see later, Paul must have spent nearly eight years at Tarsus. Why are these eight years a blank? Why were they such a contrast to the crowded hours of the period that was just beginning? On our hypothesis as to the meaning of Luke’s silence, we conclude that Paul was still not fully conscious of the full meaning of his mission; he was still bound in the fetters of Judaic consistency, and acted as if the door of the synagogue was the portal through which the Nations must find their way into the Church. He had not yet learned, or at least he had not yet so fully shaken himself free from the prejudices of education and tradition as to act on the knowledge, that God “had opened a door of faith unto the nations” (XIV 27, p. 85).
A point in Luke’s style here deserves note. He has mentioned in IX 30 that Saul was sent away to Tarsus; and he now takes up the thread from that point, saying that Barnabas went to Tarsus to seek for Saul. He implies that the reader must understand Tarsus to have been Saul’s headquarters during the intervening period. Not merely. does XI 25 require one to look back, but also IX 30
SEC 2. The Coming of Barnabas.
requires one to look forward; each is the complement of the other, and the two together hit off a long period during which no critical event had to be recorded. The same period, together with the following year in Antioch, is described by Paul himself, Gal. I 21, 22: “Then I came into the climes of Syria and Cilicia: and I continued to be unknown by face to the churches of Judea, but they only heard say, ‘He that once persecuted us now preacheth the faith’”. Paul and Luke complete each other, and make up a picture of over ten years of quiet work within the range of the synagogue and its influence.
The words of v. 25 seem harsh until one takes them as a direct backward reference to IX 30, and as implying a statement about the intervening period. The Bezan Commentator, not catching the style of Luke, inserts an explanatory clause, “hearing that Saul is in Tarsus,” which rounds off the sense here by cutting away the necessity of finding in XI 25 the completion of a period of history whose beginning is recorded in IX 30.
The term “Christians” attests that the congregation became a familiar subject of talk, and probably of gossip and scandal, in the city; for obviously the name originated Outside the brotherhood. The Brethren, then, were talked of in popular society as “they that are connected with Christos”: such a title could not originate with the Jews, to whom “the Christ” was sacred. The name Christos therefore must have been the most prominent in the expressions by which the Greek Brethren described or defined their faith to their pagan neighbours. The latter, doubtless, got no clear idea of what this Christos was: some took Christos as one of the strange gods whom they worshipped (XVII 18); others took him as
The Church in Antioch. CHAP. III
their leader (p. 254). In any case the name belongs to popular slang.
In accordance with the tendency of popular language to find some meaning for strange words, the strange term Christos was vulgarly modified to Chrêstos, the Greek adjective meaning “good, useful,” which seemed to popular fancy a more suitable and natural name for a leader or a deity. “Chrêstians” was the form in which the name was often used; and it occurs in inscriptions.
3. THE ANTIOCHIAN COLLECTION FOR THE POOR OF JERUSALEM.
(XI 27 A) AND AT THIS PERIOD THERE CAME DOWN FROM JERUSALEM PROPHETS TO ANTIOCH. (28A) AND THERE STOOD UP ONE OF THEM, AGABUS BY NAME, AND SIGNIFIED BY THE SPIRIT THAT THERE SHOULD BE GREAT FAMINE OVER ALL THE WORLD; WHICH CAME TO PASS IN THE DAYS OF CLAUDIUS. (29A) AND THE DISCIPLES ACCORDING TO THE MEANS OF THE INDIVIDUAL ARRANGED TO SEND CONTRIBUTIONS FOR RELIEF TO THE BRETHREN SETTLED IN JUDEA. (30A) AND THIS TOO THEY DID, AND DESPATCHED the relief TO THE ELDERS BY THE HAND OF BARNABAS AND SAUL. (XII 25A) AND BARNABAS AND SAUL FULFILLED THE MINISTRATION OF RELIEF, AND RETURNED FROM JERUSALEM BRINGING AS COMPANION JOHN SURNAMED MARK.
Luke’s brief statement about the famine is declared by Dr. Schürer to be unhistorical, improbable, and uncorroborated by other evidence.1 Opinions differ widely; for the famine seems to me to be singularly well attested, considering the scantiness of evidence for this period. Suetonius alludes to assiduæ sterilitates causing famine- 1 Eine ungeschichtliche Generalisirung, and again, ist, wie an sich unwahrscheinlich, so auch nirgends bezeugt (Jüd. Volk I p. 474.
SEC 3. The Antiochian Collection for the Poor.
prices under Claudius, while Dion Cassius and Tacitus speak of two famines in Rome, and famine in Rome implied dearth in the great corn-growing countries of the Mediterranean; Eusebius mentions famine in Greece, and an inscription perhaps refers to famine in Asia Minor.1 Thus widespread dearth over the Roman world is fully attested independently;