The life and work of St. Paul

708 APPENDIX.
to put any man to death," has been asserted to bo in direct contradiction to the narra-
tive. The explanation of that passage to mean "it is not lawful at the time of the
feast " is both philologically and historically untenable, and there seems to be little
doubt that there is truth in the statement of the Talmud that about forty years a
well-known vague term in Jewish writers before the fall of Jerusalem, the Sanhedriu
had relinquished it would be truer to say, had been deprived of the power of death. 1
That deprivation was due to the direct interference of the Komans, who would not
extend the highest judicial functions to men so likely to abuse them for seditious ends.
It is, perhaps, only an attempt of the Rabbis to veil their national humiliation, when
they attribute the diminished glories of their "House of Judgment" to thek own
leniency ; to their reluctance to shed the blood of a descendant of Abraham ; to the
consequent increase of crimes ; and to the migration from the Hall of Squares to the
" "
Shops of the Benl Hanan. But, on the other hand, we know the astute connivance
which the Romans were always ready to extend to acts which were due to religious
excitement and not to civil rebellion. 2 They rarely interfered with national superstitions.
Even Pilate, though by no means void of a sense of justice, had been quite willing to
hand over Jesus to any extreme of ecclesiastical vengeance, provided only that the direct
responsibility did not fall upon himself. Further than this, there is every reason to
believe that St. Stephen's martyrdom finds its counterpart in the murder of James, the
Lord's brother. That was brought about by the younger Hanan during a High Priesthood
of only three months' duration, in which he seized his opportunity, and availed
himself of a brief interregnum which followed on the death of Festus, and preceded the
arrival of his successor Albinus. It was at just such an interregnum that the death of
Stephen is believed to have taken place. Pontius Pilate had been sent to Home by his
official chief, Vitellius, the Prsefect of Syria, to answer to the Emperor for the complaints
of cruelty and insult brought against him by the inhabitants of every division
of his Procuratorship. Before his arrival the Emperor Tiberius died. An event of this
magnitude relaxed the sternness of government in every province of the Empire, 3 and
though Vitellius appointed Marcellus as a brief temporary locum tenens until the arrival
of Manillas, who was appointed Procurator by Gaius, 4 the Sanhedrin may have met
while there was no Procurator at all, and in any case would have found it easy to
persuade a substitute like Marcellus, or a new-comer like Marullus, that it would bs
useless to inquire into a mere riot which had ended in the richly deserved punishment
of a blaspheming Hellenist. In short, we find that the possibility of tumultuous
outbreaks which might end in a death by stoning is constantly recognised in the New
Testament 5
; and it would have been easy for the Sanhedrin to represent the stoning of
St. Stephen in such a light.
EXCURSUS VHI. (p. 101).
DAMASCUS UNDEB HARETH.
HARETH was the father-in-law of Herod Antipas, and from the day when the weakness
of that miserable prince had beguiled him into his connexion, at once adulterous and
1 Alh&dah Zara, f. 8, 2.
* The policy of Rome towards her Oriental subjects was a policy of contemptuous tolerance in
all matters that affected the local cult.
s That there was at this very time a special desire to conciliate the Jews, who had been so much
exasperated by the cruelties of Pilate, is clear from the circumstance that Vitellius, after a magnificent
reception at Jerusalem, had just restored to the Jews the custody of the pontifical vestments
which since the days of Herod the Great had been kept in the Tower of Antonia (Jos. Antt. xv. 11,
4; xviii. 4, 2). The privilege was again forfeited, and again restored to them by Claudius, at the
request of Agrippa II. (id. xx. 1, 2). The power of inflicting minor punishments seems always to
have rested with the Jews, as it does with many religious communities of raias, even under the
tyranny of Turkish misrule (Renan, Les *
Ap6tres.f. 144).
Jos. Antt. rviii. 6, 10 (cf. 4, 2).
s John viii. 59 ; x. 81-33 ; Matt, xxiii. 87 ; Acts v. 26. See Orig. ad African. 14, o&uA
Sk-rdsworth,