The life and work of St. Paul

EARLY PERSECUTIONS. 63
And here I must pause for a moment to make a remark on the grounds
which have led many modern critics to reject the authority of the Acts of the
Apostles, and to set it down as a romance, written in the cause of reconciliation
between Judaising and Pauline Christians. My object in this volume is not
controversial. It has been my endeavour here, as in my Life of Christ, to
diffuse as widely as I can a clear knowledge of the Dawn of the Christian
Faith, and to explain as lucidly as is in my power the bearing of its earliest
documents. But I have carefully studied the objections urged against the
and I cannot
authenticity and the statements of the New Testament writings ;
forbear the expression of my astonishment at the baselessness of many of the
hypotheses which have been accepted in their disparagement. Honesty of
course demands that we should admit the existence of an error where such an
but the same honesty demands the rejection of all
error can bo shown to exist ;
charges against the accuracy of the sacred historian which rest on nothing
better than hostile prepossession. It seems to me that writers like Baur and
Zeller in spite of their wide learning and great literary acumen often prove,
by captious objections and by indifference to counter considerations, the fundamental
weakness of their own system. 1 Hausrath altogether rejects the
1 See Baur, Paul. i. 35 ; Zeller. Die Apostelgesch., p. 134. Baur asserts that Gamaliel
could not have delivered the speech attributed to him because of "the striking chronological
error in the appeal to the example of Theudas." And yet he does not offer any
proof either that the Theudas here alluded to is identical with the Theudas of Josephus, or
that Josephus must necessarily be right and St. Luke necessarily wrong. Zeller, while
entering more fully into the discussion, seems only to be struck by the resemblance
between the two impostors, without allowing for the obvious differences in the accounts
of them ; and he attaches an extravagant importance to the silence of Josephus about
the unimportant movement of the earlier fanatic to whom Gamaliel is supposed to allude ;
nor does he notice the possibility, admitted even by a Jewish writer (Jost, Gfesch. d. Jud.
ii. 76), that the Theudas of Gamaliel may be the Simon, a slave of Herod, of Jos. Antt.
xvii. 10, 6 ; Tac. H. v. 9. On this identification, see Souatag, Stud. u. Krit., 1837,
p. 622; and Hackett, ad loc. Again, critics of the Tubingen school point out the
supposed absurdity of believing that the Sanhedrin Trould admit " a notable miracle "
and yet punish the men who performed it. But this is to reason from the standpoint of
modern times. The Jews have never denied the miracles of Jesus, but they have not on
that account believed in His mission. Just as a modem Protestant, familiar with the
peculiarities of nervous maladies, might accept the narrative of wonderful cures performed
at La Salette, without for a moment admitting the reality of the vision which is supposed
to have consecrated the place, so the Jews freely admitted the possibility of inconclusive
miracles, which they attributed generally to kishovf (i.e., thaumaturgy, miracles wrought
by unhallowed influence), or to m*s> nvn, phantasmagoria, or deception of the eyes.
(Derenbourg, Palest. 106, n. 3 ; 361, n. 1. ) Thus they allowed miraculous power to
idols (Abhoda Zara, f. 54, 2). There is a Talmudic anecdote (perhaps a sort of allegory
on Eccles. x. 8) which exactly illustrates this very point. B. Ehezer ben Dama was
bitten by a serpent, and Jacob the min (i.e., Christian) offered to heal him in the name of
Jesus. "Ben Dama, it is forbidden!" said his uncle, B. Ismael. "Let me do it,
urged Jacob; "I will prove to you by the Law that it is allowable." Before the
argument was over the sick man died. "Happy Ben Dama !" exclaimed his uncle;
" thou hast yielded thy soul in purity, without violating a precept of the wise " (Abhoda
Zara, cf. 27, 6 ; 55, 1 ; Jer. Shabbath, 14, 4). When St. Luke makes Gamaliel speak of
"Judas of Galilee," whereas Judas was born at Gamala, and commonly known as Judaa
the Gaulonite (rovXavmjs avrjp, Jos. Antt. xviii. 1, 1), this trivial peculiarity would
unquestionably have been paraded by German critics as a proof or the unhistorical
character of the speech, but for the fortunate accident that Josephus, with reference to
the sphere of his activity, thrioe calls hi i FoAiA-iio? (Antt. xviii. 1, 6 ; xx. 5, 2 ;
& J. ii. 8, 1).