The life and work of St. Paul

APOTHEOSIS OF ROMAN EMPEEORS. 717
received a double number of blows. The duty of reading aloud while the scourging
continued was also a minute inference from the words of Scripture. 1
A person was liable to this penalt7 if he wilfully violated any of the negative
precepts of the Law, and inadvertently any of those which, if deliberately transgressed,
involved the threat of excision from among the 2
people, or "death by the visitation
of God." 8 Under which of the numerous offences for which this punishment was
assigned Paul five times suffered, is by no means easy to say. Looking through them
all as enumerated in the treatise Makkoth, 4 and as expanded by Maimonides,* I cannot
find any of which the Apostle could possibly have been guilty. Where, however, the
will to punish him existed, the pretext would not long be wanting. His flagellation
must have been that minor but stil] terrible punishment which was called " the legal
scourging" or the "scourging of forty," 6 because the yet deadlier flagellation with rods,
which was called the Rabbinic, or the flagellation of contumacy, 7 was never inflicted
within the limits of the Holy Land, and is expressly stated to have been a beating to
death,
"When once an offender had been scourged this punishment was considered to remove
the danger of "cutting off," 3 and not only so, but it was regarded as leaving no ignominy
behind it. The humane expression of Moses that forty stripes were not to be
exceeded " lest thy brother seem vile unto thee," was interpreted to mean that when
the punishment was over the sufferer was "restored to his integrity." So completely
was this the case that even the High Priest himself might be thus scourged, and
afterwards be "restored to his majesty." But although it was assumed that he would
suffer no ulterior injury, but rather be sure to win an inheritance in the future, yet, of
course, if he again offended he was again scourged. 9 It was even possible that for one
offence, if it involved the disobedience to several negative precepts, he might incur
several consecutive scourgings, care being only taken that he had sufficiently recovered
from the first before the next was inflicted. It is, therefore, by no means impossible,
or even improbable, that during those "many days" which Paul spent in Damascus La
trying to convince these passionate disputants, he may have incurred this torture
several times.
To have refused to undergo it by sheltering himself under the privilege of hie
Roman citizenship would have been to incur excommunication, and finally to have out
himself off from admission into the synagogues.
EXCURSUS XII. (p. 141).
APOTHEOSIS OF ROMAN EMPERORS.
THE early Emperors rather discouraged than stimulated this tendency to flatter them by
a premature apotheosis. If temples had been built to them in their lifetime, they had
always been to their " genius," or had at least been associated as at Athens with the
divinity of Rome. 10 Augustus, with these restrictions, had yielded to the earnest
bidden to have leaven In their houses daring the Passover, and they abstained from oven using the
word. Being forbidden swine's flesh, they avoid the word pig altogether, and call the pig nnw "lyi,
dablMr acheer, "the other thing," &c. (Godwyn, Moses and Aaron, viil. 12.) These are specimens
of the " hedge of the Law."
1 Deut. xrv. 4, imn mpa, "hlnc colligimus plagas inflgi debere inter legendum" (B. Ob. da
Bartenora, op. Snrenhus. MisTina, iv. *
290).
p-fl. C'DttJ 'T3 niTO-
* s
III., 1, 2, 3, 4.
HUkoth Sanhedr. xviii., xix. Mdlkooth, nrVWIi or D'JWN-
7 nmo. See Carpzov. App. Crit., p. 589. The Greek 8
.
rvfiironcr/ios 2 Mace. hi. 35.
They quoted Lev. xviii. 29 ; 2 Mace. ill. 15.
10 Dion Cass. M. 20 ; Suet. Avg. 62. Though he knew that even Proconsuls had in the provinces
been honoured with temples, yet in " nullcl provincift, nisi comwvuni suo Jiowifieque nomiiiz recepit."
See the excellent chapter on " L'Apotheose Imperiale," in Boissier, La Religion Komaine, i. 123 205.