The life and work of St. Paul

THE SAMAEITAN8 THE EUNUCH THE CENTUBION. 153
all the four-footed beasts, and reptiles of the earth, and fowls of the 1
air,
while a voice said to him, "Rise, Peter, slay and eat." But even in his
hunger, kindled yet more keenly by the sight of food, Peter did not forget the
habits of his training. Among these animals and creeping things were swine,
and camels, and rabbits, and creatures which did not chew the cud or divide the
hoof all of which had been distinctly forbidden by the Law as articles of
food. Better die of hunger than violate the rules of the Kashar, and eat such
things, the 2
very thought of which caused a shudder to a Jew. It seemed
strange to Peter that a voice from heaven should bid him, without exception
or distinction, to slay and eat creatures among which the unclean were thus
mingled with the clean ; nay, the very presence of the unclean among them
seemed to defile the entire sheet. 3 Brief as is the narrative of this trance in
which bodily sensations assuming the grotesque form of objective images
4 became a medium of spiritual illumination, it is clearly implied that though
pure and impure animals were freely mingled in the great white sheet, it was
mainly on the latter that the glance of Peter fell, just as it was with
" "
sinners of the Gentiles, and their admission to the privileges of brother-
hood, that his thoughts must have been mainly occupied. Accordingly, with
that simple and audacious self-confidence which in his character was so singularly
mingled with fits of timidity and depression, he boldly corrects the Voice
which orders him, and reminds the Divine Interlocutor that he must, so to
speak, have made an oversight. 6
" "
By no means, Lord ! and the reader will immediately recall the scene
of the Gospel, in which St. Peter, emboldened by Christ's words of praise,
took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, " Be it far from Thee, Lord,"
SeSfnevov Kol are wanting in , A, B, E. The Vulgate has " caelo."
quatuor initiis submit li da
1 Acts x. 12, iravm rt, "all the," not "all kinds of," which would be navrola. Augustine
uses the comparison of the ark (c, Faust, xii 15) ; omit xai TO. (fypia (N, A, B, &c.).
2 On the Kashar, see infra, p. 245. The example of Daniel (i. 8 16) made the Jews
more particular. Josephus (Fit. 3) tells us that some priests imprisoned at Borne lived
only on figs and nuts.
3 In the Talmud (Sanhedr. f. 59, coL 2) there is a curious story about unclean animals
Bupernaturally represented to R. Shimon Ben Chalaphtha, who slays them for food. This
leads to the remark, "Nothing unclean comet down from heaven," Have we here aa
oblique argument against the significance of St. Peter's vision ? B. Ishmael said that the
care of Israel to avoid creeping things would alone have been a reason why God saved
them from Egypt (Babha Metzia, L 61, 2). Yet every Sanhedrist must be ingenious
enough to prove that a creeping thing is clean (Sanhedrin, f. 17, 1).
4 See some excellent remarks of Neander, Planting, i. 73.
6 Of. John xiii. 8. Increased familiarity with Jewish writings invariably deepens our
conviction that in the New Testament we are dealing with truthful records. Knowing
as we do the reverence of the Jews for divine intimations, we might well have supposed
that not even in a trance would Peter have raised objections to the mandate of the Bath-
Kol. And yet we find exactly the same thing in Scripture (1 Kings six. 14 ; Jonah iv.
1, 9 ; Jer. i. 6), in the previous accounts of Peter himself (Matt. xvi. 22) ; of St. Paul
(Acts xxii. 19) ; and in the Talmudic writings. Few stories of the Talmud convey a
more unshaken conviction of the indefeasible obligatoriness of the Law than that of the
resistance even to a voice from heaven by the assembled Rabbis, in Babha Metzia, f. 59,
2 (I have quoted it in the Expositor, 1877). It not only illustrates the point immediately
before us, but also shows more clearly than anything else could do the overwhelming
,, .
forcos against which St. Paul had to fight his way. - .