The life and work of St. Paul

SAtfl, IN AKABIA. 709
incestuous, with Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, Hareth had been the implacable
foe of the Tetrarch of Galilee. Their quarrel had ended in a battle, in which the
troops of Hareth won a signal victory. After this defeat, in which the Jews saw a
retribution for the murder of John the 1
Baptist, Antipas applied to the Emperor
Tiberius, who sent Vitellius to chastise the audacious Emir who had dared to defeat an
ally of Rome. But when Vitellius had reached Jerusalem, he heard the news of the
death of Tiberius. The death of a Roman emperor often involved so immense a change
of policy, that Vitellius did not venture, without fresh instructions, to renew the war.
The details of what followed have not been preserved. That Hareth ventured to seize
Damascus is improbable. Vitellius was too vigorous a legate, and the Arab had too
wholesome a dread of imperial Rome, to venture on so daring an act of rebellion. On
the other hand, it is not impossible that the Emperor Gaius who was fond of dis-
tributing kingdoms among princes whom he 2
favoured, and whose mind was poisoned
against Antipas by his friend and minion Agrippa I. should have given back to Hareth
a town which in old days had belonged to the Nabathzean dynasty. 3 The conjecture
receives some independent confirmation. Coins of Damascus are found which bear the
image of Augustus, of Tiberius, and again of Nero, but none which bear that of Gaius
or of Claudius. This would lead us to infer that during these reigns Damascus waa
subject to a local sway. 4
EXCURSUS EX. (p. 120).
SAUL IN ABABIA.
FEW geographical terms are more vaguely used by ancient writers than "Arabia," and
some have seen the explanation of St. Luke's silence about the retirement of St. Paul, in
the possibility that he may scarcely have gone beyond the immediate region of Damascus.
Justin Martyr challenges Trypho to deny that Damascus " belongs and did belong to
Arabia, though now it has been assigned to what is called Syrophcenicia." Some
shadow of probability may be, perhaps, given to the view that St. Paul did not travel far
from Syria, because the Arabic translator of the Epistle to the Galatians renders the
clause in GaL i. 17, &c., "Immediately I went to El Belka ; " and in GaL iv. 25, mis-
taking the meaning of the word