The life and work of St. Paul

8*. PAUL AT ATHSN8. 305
talked with him in the market-place 1 the subject-matter of his conversation
had been neither pleasure nor virtue, but Jesus and the Resurrection.* The
only result had been to create a certain amount of curiosity a desire to hear
a more connected statement of what he had to say. But this curiosity barely
emerged beyond the stage of contempt. To some he was "apparently a
proclaimer of strange deities;" 8 to others he was a mere "sparrow," a mere
"seed-pecker"* "a picker-up of learning's crumbs," a victim of unoriginal
hallucinations, a retailer of second-hand scraps. The view of the majority of
these frivolous sciolists respecting one whose significance for the world
transcended that of all their schools would have coincided nearly with that of
" Cleon the poet from the sprinkled isles,"
which our poet gives in the following words :
" And for the rest
I cannot tell thy messenger aright,
Where to deliver what he hears of thine,
To one called Faulua we have heard his fame
Indeed, if Christus be not one with him
I know not nor am troubled much to know.
Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew,
As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised,
Hath access to a secret shut from us ?
Thou wrongest our philosophy, O King,
In stooping to inquire of such an one,
As if his answer could impose at all.
He writeth, doth he ? well, and he may write !
O, the Jew findeth scholars ! certain slaves,
Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ ;
And (as I gathered from a bystander)
Their doctrines could be held by no sane man." *
1 When Apollonius landed at the Peiraeus he is represented as finding Athens very
crowded and intensely hot. On his way to the city he met many philosophers, some
reading, spine perorating, and some arguing, all of whom greeted him. rrap;/i Si ovS*k
O.VTOV, aAA.0. TeK/iTjpo/xevoi iriiirT*? lift tin 'AiroAAwpioC avvavea-rpi&wro ft Hal qTO xaiporTcc
(Philostr. Vit. iv. 17).
2 Acts xvii. 18. The word "virtue" occurs but once in St. Paul (Phil. iv. 8), and
f,Soi')j, in the classic sense only in Tit. iii. 3. The notion that the philosophers took
' '
the Resurrection " to be a new goddess Anastasis, though adopted- by Chrysostom,
Theophylact, CEcumenius, &c., and even in modern times by Renan ("Plusieurs a ce
qu'il paraifc, prirent Anastasi* pour un nom de deesse, et crurent quo Jesus et Anastasis
e talent quelque nouveau couple divin quo ces reveurs orientaux venaient prficher," St.
Paul, p. 190), seems to me almost absurd. It would argue, as has been well said, either
utter obscurity in the preaching of St. Paul, or the most incredible stupidity in hia
hearers.
3 It is almost impossible to suppose that St. Luke is not mentally referring to the
charge against Socrates, iSncr SujKparin . . . luuva. ftaipdrta curfc'pwp (Xen. Mem. I. i.).
4
2irp/ioAdyo?, a seed-pecking bird, applied as a contemptuous nickname to Athenian
shoplifters and area sneaks (Eustath. ad Od. v. 490), and then to babblers who talked of
things which they did not understand. It was the very opprobrium which Demosthenes
iad launched against Jischines (Pro {7wv