The Apostles

The political condition of the world was most melancholy. All power was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. The most shameful and degrading scenes were daily enacted. The R...

Such was the world which the Christian missionaries undertook to convert. It may now be readily perceived, it seems to me, that the enterprise was nothing impossible, and that i...

The custom of living in a community professing one identical faith, and indulging in one and the same expectation, necessarily produced many habits common to all the society. Ve...

The disciples, during the first hours which elapsed after his death, had, in this respect, no fixed hope. The sentiments which they so artlessly confide to us show that they bel...

But the year 38 is marked in the history of the nascent Church by a new and important conquest. It was during that year[10.1] that we may safely place the conversion of that sai...

From the year 38 to the year 44 no persecution seems to have weighed upon the Church.[11.1] The faithful, no doubt, were far more prudent than before the death of Stephen, and a...

We have seen Barnabas leaving Antioch in order to carry to the faithful at Jerusalem the contributions of their brethren in Syria, and arriving at Jerusalem in time to be presen...

A comparison of the history of religion shows, as a general truth, that all those religions not contemporary with the origin of language itself, owe their establishment to socia...

Mean, narrow, ignorant, inexperienced they were, as much as was possible for them to be. Their simplicity of mind was extreme; their credulity had no bounds. But they had one qu...

The most earnest desire of those who have lost a dear friend is to revisit the places where they have lived with him. It was no doubt this feeling which, some days after the eve...

Barnabas found the Church of Jerusalem in great trouble. The year 44 was perilous to it. Besides the famine, the fires of persecution which had been smothered since the death of...

During the first century of the Christian era, the empire, while manifesting more or less hostility to the religious innovations which were imported from the East, did not decla...

It was inevitable that the preachings of the new sect, even while they were disseminated with much reserve, should revive the animosities which had accumulated against its Found...

We have now arrived at a period when Christianity may be said to have become established. In the history of religions it is only the earliest years during which their existence...

The new faith was propagated from one neighborhood to another with astonishing rapidity. The members of the Church of Jerusalem who had been dispersed immediately after the deat...

[19.1] See de Rossi, Bull. di Arch. Crist. 3d year, Nos. 3, 5, 6, 12, Eg. Pomponia Græcina (Tac. Ann. xiii. 32) under Nero as already characteristic; but it is not certain that...

The persecution of the year 37 had for its result, as always happens, the expansion of the doctrine it was wished to arrest. Until then the Christian preaching had scarcely exte...

Great was the excitement at Jerusalem[13.1] on hearing what had passed at Antioch. Notwithstanding the kindly wishes of a few of the principal members of the Church of Jerusalem...

The apparitions, in the meanwhile, as is usually the case in all movements of too credulous enthusiasm, began to diminish. Popular chimeras are nearly allied to contagious disea...

Up to the present time the Church of Jerusalem has practically been only a little Galilean colony. The friends of Jesus in Jerusalem and its vicinity, such as Lazarus, Martha an...

[17.4] See for example the funeral oration on Turia by her husband, Q. Lucretius Vespillo, of which the complete epigraphic text was first published by Mommsen in _Memoires de l...

[10.1] This date resulted from the comparison of chapters ix., xi., xii. of the _Acts_ with Gal. i. 18; ii. 1, and from the synchronism presented by Chapter xii. of the _Acts_ w...

[18.13] Suet., Tib., 36; Tac., Ann., ii., 85; Jos., Ant. XVII., iii., 4, 5; Philo., In Flaccum, § 4; Leg. ad Caium, § 24; Sen. Epist. cviii. 22. The assertion of Tertullian (Apo...

[5.4] No literary production has ever so often repeated the word "joy" as the New Testament. See I. Thess. i. 6; v. 16; Rom. xiv. 17; xv. 13; Galat. v. 22; Philip i. 25; iii. 1;...

[2.4] Matt. xxviii. 16; John xxi.; Luke xxiv. 49, 50, 52, and the _Acts_ i. 3, 4, are here in flagrant contradiction to Mark xvi. 1-8, and Matthew. The second conclusion of Mark...

{1.20} In all this, the recital of the fourth Gospel is vastly superior. It is our principal guide. In Luke xxiv. 12, Peter alone goes to the tomb. In the conclusion of Mark giv...

[16.6] The author of Acts, being a partisan of the hierarchy and of church-domination, has perhaps inserted this circumstance. Paul knew nothing of any such ordination or consec...

[12.3] Compare Otfried Müller, _Antiochian Antiquities_, Göttingen, 1839, p. 68. John Chrysostom, on _Saint Ignatius_, 4 (opp. t. ii. p. 597, edit. Montfaucon): _On Matthew_, Ho...

[15.17] It cannot be considered entirely apocryphal in view of the agreement between the system set forth in it, and what little we learn from the _Acts_ concerning the doctrine...

[4.2] _Acts_ i. 15. The greater part of these "five hundred brethren" doubtless remained in Galilee. That which is told in _Acts_ ii. 41, is surely an exaggeration, or at least...

[9.2] Acts viii. 5, and following. That it was not the apostle is evident from a comparison of the passages, _Acts_ viii. 1, 5, 12, 14, 40; xxi. 8. It is true that the verse, _A...

[11.19] Compare Gruter, p. 891, 4; Reinesius, _Inscript._, XIV. 61; Mommsen, _Inscr. regni Neap._, 622, 2094, 3052, 4985; Pape, _Wört der Griech. Eigenn._, on this word Cf. Jos....

[14.11] Jos. _Ant._ XIX. v. 2, and sequel; xx. vi. 3.; _B. J._, II. xii. 7. The restrictive measures which he took against the Jews of Rome (_Acts_ xviii. 2; Suetonius _Claude_,...

[13.4] Libanius. _Pro templis_, p. 164, &c.; _De carcere vinctis_, p. 458.; Theodoret, _Hist. Eccl._ iv. 28; Jean Chrysost.; Homil. lxxii. _in Matt._ 3 (vol. vii. p. 705). _In E...

[6.6] _Acts_ v. 12-16. The _Acts_ are full of miracles. That of Eutychus (_Acts_ xx. 7-12) is surely related by ocular testimony. The same of _Acts_ xxviii. Comp. Papias in Euse...

[3.3] Matthew is exclusively Galilean; Luke and the second Mark, xvi. 9-22, are exclusively Jerusalemitish. John unites the two traditions. Paul (I. Cor. xv. 5-8) also admits th...

[8.8] Let us add that the reciprocal antipathy of Jesus and the Pharisees seems to have been exaggerated by the synoptical Evangelists, perhaps on account of the events which, a...

[7.10] Romans xvi. 1, 12; I. Tim. iii. 11; v. 9, and following. Pliny Epist. x. 97. The Epistles to Timothy are most probably not from the pen of Saint Paul; but are in any even...

On the other hand, the text of notes 1.6, 11.22, 15.49 and 16.23 were missing altogether. These have been restored from the French edition, and the notes renumbered accordingly....

[1.1] Mark xvi. 11; Luke xviii. 34; xxiv. 44; John xx. 9, 24, and following verses. The contrary opinion in Matt. xii. 40; xxi. 4, 24; xvii. 9, 23; xx. 19; xxxi. 32; Mark viii....

which has been handed down to us in the manuscript L. of Paris, and the margin of the Philoxenian version (_Nov. Test._, edit. Griesbach, Schultz, 1, page 291 note); the other b...