The life and work of St. Paul

BT. PETER AND THE FIBST PENTECOST. 49
Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, 1
they yet suffered the women
to meet with them in prayer, not in any separate court, as in the Temple
cervices, not with dividing partitions, as in the worship of the synagogue, 2 but
5n that equality of spiritual communion, which was to develop hereafter into
the glorious doctrine that among Christ's redeemed " there is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male and female," but
that, in Christ Jesus, all are one.8
During the ten days which elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost,
it was among the earliest cares of the Apostles to fill up the vacancy which
had been caused in their number by the death of Judas. This was done at a
full conclave of the believers in Jerusalem, who, in the absence of many
of those five hundred to whom Christ had appeared in Galilee, numbered
about one hundred and twenty. The terrible circumstances of the traitor's
suicide, of which every varied and shuddering tradition was full of horror, had
'left upon their minds a deeper faith in God's immediate retribution upon guilt.
|He had fallen from his high charge by transgression, and had gone to his
,own place.* That his place should be supplied appeared reasonable, both
'because Jesus Himself had appointed twelve Apostles the ideal number of
the tribes of Israel and also because Peter, and the Church generally, saw in
Judas the antitype of Ahitophel, and applying to him a passage of the 109th
Psalm, they wished, now that his habitation was desolate, that another should
+ftke his office. 5 The essential qualification for the new Apostle was that he
should have been a witness of the Resurrection, and should have companied
with the disciples all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among
them. The means taken for his appointment, being unique in the New
Testament, seem to result from the unique position of the Church during the
few days between the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. As
though they felt that the swift power of intuitive discernment was not yet
theirs, they selected two, Joseph Barsabbas, who in Gentile circles assumed
the common surname of Justus, and Matthias. 6 They then, in accordance
1 " The Church, so to speak, was but half born ; the other half was still in the womb
of the synagogue. The followers of Jesus were under the guidance of the Apostles, but
continued to acknowledge the authority of the chair of Moses in Jerusalem " (Dr.
Dollinger, First Age, p. 43).
2 Jos. Antt. xv. 11, 5 ; Philo, ii. 476. Gal. iii. 28.
4 Acts i. 25, eU TOV roTrov TOV ISiov (aZ. oucaiov). This profound and reverent euphemism
is one of the many traces of the reticence with which the early Church spoke of the
fate of those who had departed. The reticence is all the more remarkable if the word
" "
place be meant to bear allusive reference to the same word in the earlier part of the
text, where the true reading is -rovov TTJ? iuueovias (A, B, C, D), not K^pov, as in E.V.
The origin of this striking expression may perhaps be the Rabbinic comments on Numb,
xrir. 25, where "Balaam went to his own place" is explained to mean " to Gehenna."
Cf . Judg. ix, 55, TO'po'j, and Targ. Eccles. vi. 6 ; v. Schottgen, p. 407 ; and cf. Clem. Rom
ad Cor. i. 5 ; Polyc. ad Phil. 9 ; Ignat. ad Magnes. 5 (Meyer). See too Dan. xii. 13.
5 Ps. xli. 9 ; cix. 8. The alteration of the T/X"y. airriov into ourov is a good illustration
of the free method of quotation and interpretation of the Old Testament, which is
universally adopted in the New. The 109th has been called the Iscariotic Psalm.
6 Of these nothing is known, unless it be true that they were among the Seventy
fEuseb. If. E. i. 12 ; Epiphan. Haer. i. 20); and that Joseph drank poison unharmed
(Fapias ap. Eueeb. H. E. iii. 39). On the uncertain derivation of Barsabbae (to in H, A,