The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL AT COEINTH. 323
about mere names, and your law, see to it yourselves ; for a judge of these
matters I do not choose to be." Having thus, as we should say, quashed
the indictment, " my Lord Gallio " ordered his lictors to clear the court. We
may be sure they made short work of ejecting the frustrated but muttering
mob, on whose disappointed malignity, if his countenance at all reflected the
feelings expressed by his words, he must have been looking down from his
lofty tribunal with undisguised contempt. 1
It took the Romans nearly two
centuries to learn that Christianity was something infinitely more important
than the Jewish sect which they mistook it to be. It would have been better
for them and for the world if they had tried to got rid of this disdain, and
to learn wherein lay the secret power of a religion which they could neither
eradicate nor suppress. But while we regret this unphilosophic disregard, let
us at least do justice to Roman impartiality. In Gallio, in Lysias, in Felix,
in Festus, in the centurion Julius, even in Pilate, 2 different as were their
degrees of rectitude, wo cannot but admire the trained judicial insight with
which they at once saw through the subterranean injustice and virulent ani-
mosity of the Jews in bringing false charges against innocent men. Deep as
was his ignorance of the issues which were at stake, the conduct of Gallio
was in accordance with the strictest justice when " he dravo them from his
judgment-seat."
But the scene did not end here. The volatile Greeks, 3
though they
had not dared to interfere until the decision of the Proconsul had been
announced, were now keenly delighted to see how completely the malice of
the Jews had been foiled ; and since the highest authority had pronounced
the charge against St. Paul to be frivolous, they seized the opportunity of
executing a little Lynch law. The ringleader of the Jewish faction had
been a certain Sosthenes, who may have succeeded Crispus in the function
of Ruler of the Synagogue, and whose zeal may have been all the more
violently stimulated by the defection of his predecessor.* Whether the
Corinthians knew that St. Paul was a Roman citizen or not, they must at
least have been aware that he had separated from the synagogue, and that
1
Perhaps no passage of the ancient authors, full as they are of dislike to the
Jews (see infra, Excursus XIV.), expresses so undisguised a bitterness, or ia so
thoroughly expressive of the way in which the Romans regarded this singular people,
as that in which Tacitus relates how Tiberius banished 4,000 freedmen "infected with
"
that superstition into Sardinia, to keep down the brigands of that island, with the
distinct hope that the unhealthy climate might help to get rid of them
"
et si, ob
gravitatem caeli interissent, vile damnum " (Ann. ii. 85). Suetonius tells us, with yet
more brutal indifference, that Tiberius, on pretext of military service, scattered them
among all the unhealthiest provinces, banishing the rest on pain of being reduced to
slavery (Suet. Tib. 86 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5).
1 Acts xxiii. 29 ; xxv. 19. The ignorant provincialism of the justices at Philippi was
of too low a type to understand Roman law.
Acts xviii. 17, vavTft. The OC'EAATJW Of D, E is a gloss, though a correct one. If
this Sosthenes is identical with the Sosthenes of 1 Cor. i. 1, he must have been subsequently
converted but the name is a common one, and it is hardly likely that two
;
rulers of the synagogue would be converted in succession.
* I give the view which seems to me the most probable, pjwrfng over masses of idle
conjectures.