PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Dictionary of the Apostolic Church — Volume 1
James Hastings · 1,014,604 words · 1012 reading sections
Section 1
Dictionary of th( Apostolic Church / ^' Dictionary of the Apostolic Church EDITED BY JAMES HASTINGS, D.D. WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF JOHN A. SELBIE, D.D. AND JOHN C. LAMBERT, D.D. VOLUME I AARON-LYSTRA New York: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK 1916 Copyright, 191G, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S S…
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DiMONT (Charles Tunnacliff), B.D. (Oxon.). Principal of Salisbury Theological College; Prebendary of Salisbury; Chaplain to the Bishop of Salisbury. Business, Labour. VON DoBSCHUTZ (Ernst), D.Theol. Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the University of Breslau. Communion, Fellowship, Hellenism, Josephus, Donald …
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Martin (G. Currie), M.A., B.D. Lecturer in connexion with the National Council of Adult School Unions ; formerly Professor of New Testament at the York- shire United College and Lancashire College. Hell. Mathews (Shailer), A.M., D.D. (Colby, Oberlin, Brown). Dean of the Divinity School, and Professor of Historical Th…
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AUTHOES OF ARTICLES 11^ THIS VOLUME Smith (Sherwin), M.A., B.D. Minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Burnley. Abomination, Clean and Unclean. SOUTER (Alexander), M.A., D.Litt. Regius Professor of Humanity and Lecturer in Mediaeval Palaeography in the University of Aberdeen ; formerly Professor of New Testa…
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Maccabees. Mt = :Matthew. Mk = Mark. Lk = Luke. Jn = John. Ac = Acts. Ro = Romans. 1 Co, 2 Co = 1 Corinthians. Gal = Galatians. Eph = Ephesians. Ph — Philippians. Col = Colossians. New Testament. 1 Th, 2 Th = l and 2 Thessalonians. 1 Ti, 2 Ti = l and 2 Timothy. Tit = Titus. Pliilem = Philemon, and 2 He = Hebrews.…
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1. In regard to vocation, both were appointed by God (He S'*) ; yet to the priesthood of Christ no Aaronic (7"), or Levitical (7"), or legal (9^) measure may be put. He was a man like Aaron (2^^'-)> capable of sympathy both by nature and from experience (4^'') ; yet His priesthood is distinctly of a higher and eternal …
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In Rev 9" Abaddon is not merely personified in the free jjoetic manner of Job 28--, but is used as the personal designation in Hebrew of a fallen angel described as the king of the locusts and ' the angel of the abyss,' whose name in the Greek tongue is said to be Apollyon. In the LXX 'cibhaddon is regularly rendered b…
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ABEL ABOMIXATION ^vith the Greek equivalent attached to it, as a familiar devotional phrase (like Maran atha [1 Co 16'-^], -which would be quite intelligible to Chris- tians of Gentile origin, though its Greek transla- tion, 6 Ki'ptos iyyds [Ph 4'], was also used ; of. Did. 10^, where ' Maran atha' and ' Amen ' close…
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1. The belieYer as the place of the abiding. — A somewhat peculiar expression is found in 1 Jn 2^, where we read : ' The anointing . . . abideth in you.' By xpto-/ia is meant the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Co l^^), whose presence in the heart gives the believer an independent power of testing whatever teaching he r…
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2. The superabundant wealth of the gospel as a medium of the Divine energies of redemption. — The Christian faith is full of spiritual resources on which the soul may draw to the utmost of its needs. In the teaching of our Lord, the prodigality of His illustrations, their varied character, and the frequency with which …
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To St. Paul faith is the motive power of the whole life, and in two expositions of his doctrine — Ro 4, Gal 3 — he affirms the essential identity of Abraham's faith with that of every Christian. He does not, indeed, think (like Jesus Himself in Jn 8^) of Abraham as directly foreseeing the day of Christ, but he maintain…
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For divergent critical views of the Abraham-Melchizedek pericope of Gn 14 see Wellhausen, Comp.'^, 1SS9, p. 211 f. ; Gunkel, Genesis, 253; Skinner, Genesis, 269 f. Against Wellhausen's theory that the story is a post-exilic attempt to glorify the priesthood in Jerusalem, Gunkel and Skinner argu< for an antique traditio…
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(b) An absorbing pre-occupation with any pursuit may be the cause of fasting. The artist or the scientist may forget to take food, in the intensity of his application to his Avork ; or any great emo- tion like sorrow may make one ' forget to take bread.' Such a fast we have in Ac 9^, where St. Paul, we are told, was wi…
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(2) Fastings were used in certain cases to induce ecstatic conditions. This is a well-known feature in apocalyptic writings. Perhaps the Colossi an heretics did this (cf. & eSpaKcv ifx^arevwu, Col 2'^). St. John and the other Apostles with him are said to have fasted three days before writing tlie Fourth Gospel (Murato…
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We may conclude, then, that, according to the NT, fasting is not enjoined or even recommended as a spiritual help. The ideal is life with the Risen Christ, which involves not only total renunciation of all sinful actions but self-restraint in all conduct. When the individual Christian finds fasting to be a part of this…
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II. Ascetic principles. — Abstinence is wider than fasting or outward observances ; it implies principles by which these external actions are determined, and it keeps in view also the inner reality of which they are the expression. It in- cludes character as well as conduct. Indeed, it is this inward reality which is m…
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Some have maintained that St. Paul tends to regard sanctihcation as mainly absence from sensual sin (Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, Eng. tr., 1904, ii. 334), and others that he, possibly from his own bitter experience of this sin, empha- sized this aspect of sanctihcation (A. B. Bruce, .S'^. PuuVs Conception of Ch…
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ii. 20), ' abandoning themselves like goats to pleasure, as if insulting the body, they lead a life of self-indulgence.' It is this that St. John is con- futing in these perfectionist passages, just as St. Paul confutes ascetic severity towards the body in Colossians, by pointing to the nature of the new life the Chris…
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See also artt. SELF-DENIAL and Temperance. LrrERATURE. — Consult the books referred to in the article and the various Commentaries. See also J. B. Lightfoot, C'olos- sians'\ 1879, p. b97 tf. ; C. E. Luthardt, Christian Ethics before the Reformation, tr. Hastie, Edinburgh, 18S9 ; O. Zbckler, Eritische Gesch. der A><k<'…
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12 ACCEPTANCE ACCEPTANCE the abyss was conceived of as the proper home of the devil and his angels, in the centre of which was a lake of tire reserved as the place of their final punislnnent. The previous history of the word explains its use in the NT. In Ko 10", where he is referring to Dt 30^^, St. Paul uses it s…
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There is a theological problem of importance raised by these passages — What is it that consti- tutes the ground of our acceptance with God ? The full treatment of this problem must be sought under the art. JUSTIFICATION, but the following considerations may be properly adduced here. Unquestionably the Christian religi…
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2. The light thrown on the character and attitude of God towards man. — The kingly con- cept represents God as supreme, one to whom all allegiance is due, and who has the power of life and death over all His subjects. In the OT, Jahweh, especially in the Psalms, is often repre- sented as the King of His people Israel (…
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14 ACCOUNT ACHAICUS ACCOUNT. — It will be sufficient merely to mention the use of the verb 'account' (\oylfofj.ai) in the sense of ' reckon,' ' deem,' ' consider' (Ro 8***, 1 Co 41, He ll'^ 2 P 3'5). Simple uses of the noun are found in Ac 19^", when the 'town-clerk' {q.v.) of Ephesus warns his fellow-citizens of th…
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' In gratitude for the recognition which his artistic contribu- tions had met with in the native land of the Muses . . . [he] declared the Greeks collectively to be rid of Roman govern- ment, free from tribute, and, like the Itahans, subject to no governor. At once there arose throughout Greece movements, which would h…
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1. Greek MSS. — The most complete study of the whole mass of Greek MSS is that of von Soden in his Schriften des Neuen Testaments (Berlin, 1902-10). As his grouping of the MSS is almost entirely independent of his theories as to tlie early history of the text, and represents facts which cannot be overlooked, it is best…
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(4) The Vulgate. — It is impossible here to enumerate the hundreds of Vulgate MSS of the Acts. Their study is a special branch of investigation, which has little bearing on the Acts, and for all purposes, except that of tracing the history of the Vulgate, the edition of Wordsworth and White may be regarded as sufficien…
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(2) Founded mainly on the basis of their work, two theories were suggested to supply this deficiency. (a) Rendel Harris (' A Study of Codex Bezte in TS ii. 1 [1891], and Foiir Lectures on the Western Text, Cambridge, 1894) and F. H. Chase (The Old Syriac Element in the Text of Codex Bezce, London, 1893) thought that …
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Tiie value of this tradition must necessarily de- pend on the internal evidence of the book itself. The arguments can best be arranged under the two heads of favourable and unfavourable to the tradition. 1. In favoar of the tradition of Lake's author- ship is the evidence of the ' Ave-sections,' or pass- ages in which…
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18 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ACTS OF THE APOSTLES Council (Ac 15), as contrasted with the complete silence of the Epistles as to this agreement. If these four propositions were sound, they would certainly be strong evidence against the Lucan authorship of Acts. But there is much to be said against each of them on the fo…
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The whole question of glossolalia can be studied in H. Gun- kel, Die Wirkimgen des heiligen Geistes, Gottingen, 1899 ; H. Lietzmann's Commentary on 1 Cor. in his Handbuch zum NT, iii. 2, Tiibingen, 1909 ; J. Weiss, ' 1 Cor." in Meyer's Krit.-Exeg. Kommentar, Gottingen, 1910 (9th ed. of '1 Cor.'). (b) The accounts give…
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These difficulties have been met in England since the time of Lightfoot by assuming that the Apos- tolic decrees had only a local and e[/hemeral import- ance, in which case it does not seem obvious why they are given so prominent a place in Acts. In Germany this difficulty has been more fully ap- preciated, and either …
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Summary. — The general result of a consideration of these divergences between Acts and the Epistles suggests that the author was sometimes inaccurate, and not always well informed, but it is hard to see that he makes mistakes which would be im- possible to one who had, indeed, been with St. Paul at times but not during…
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The revolt of Theudas was thus most probably later than the speech of Gamaliel, and the refer- ence to it must be a literary device on the part of Luke, who no doubt used the speeches which he puts into the mouths of the persons in his nariative with the same freedom as was customary among writers of that period. But t…
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1. The obYious facts. — The first point, there- fore, is the establishment of the facts, and in the main these admit of little discussion. Acts falls immediately into two chief parts — the Pauline, and the non-Pauline parts — with a short inter- mediate section in which St. Paul appears at in- tervals. The Pauline sect…
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Beferencb. Place. General Dkscriptios. Chief Actors. 1111. Jerusalem. The Ascension and promise of the Spirit. Jesus and the Twelve. 112-28. " Choice of Matthias. Speech of Peter. Peter and the Twelve. 21-47. " Gift of the Spirit. Glossolalia. Speech of Peter. Peter and the Twelve. 31-28. ti Healing m…
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Thus there is an organic unity between S'* and ll'». But 8^ is the end of the story of the Hellenistic Jews, their seven representatives, and the persecution which befell them ; and the begin- ning of this story is in 6^. Between 6" and S'* there is no break — unless it be thought that the whole speech of Stephen is th…
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24 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ACTS OF THE APOSTLES Peter, and a practical defiance of the command of the authorities not to preacli in tiie name of Jesus. Then follows a description of the joy of the Church at the release of Peter and John, and an account of their prayer — dos rois 8ov\ols <tov /xera, irapprjcrLas Trdcrrj…
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The problem then arises, how far these sources can be traced in the following chapters of Acts. Harnack is inclined to see in 5^'"^^ a doublet of 4^-'^^, and to assign the latter to A, the former to B. This is not improbable, but it is not so certain as the previous results. It is, for instance, by no means improbable …
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Besides this, on grounds of general probability, various small points give rise to doubt, or seem to belong to the world of legend rather than to that of history — for instance, the removal of Philip by the Spirit (or angel ?) from the side of the Ethiopian to Azotus ; but the main narrative otters no real reason for r…
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2. Is it more probable that the disciples stayed in Jerusalem or went to Galilee?— The evidence tliat the disciples went to Galilee is found in Mark.f The end of Mark is, of course, missing, but there are in the existing text two indications that the appearances of the risen Christ were in Galilee, and therefore that t…
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Orosius (vil. vi.), a writer of the 5th cent., is more definite, and fixes the famine in the fourth year of Claudius, which, on his system of reckon- ing (see Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem ? London, 1898, p. 223, which supplements and corrects the statement in St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, do. 18…
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Aug. A.D. 51. We may then reconstruct as follows : — Trial by Gallio— Aug. 51. Corinth to Antioch— end of 51. Arrival at Ephesus — summer of 52. Departure from Ephesus and arrival at Corinth — autumn of 54. Arrival at Jerusalem and arrest — summer of 55. Two years' imprisonment — 65 to summer 57. Trial before Fe…
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The possible difi'erence must, however, in any case not be exaggerated. The whole of early Christian literature outside Johannine influence is full of appai'ent inconsistencies, because XpiarSs sometimes means ' the person who is by nature and predestination the appointed Messiah,' some- times more narrowly ' the actua…
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But a distinction must be made between the OT as prophecy and the OT as Law. In the latter sense the position taken up in Acts is that the Law of the OT is binding in every detail on Jewish Chri-stians, but not binding at all on GentUe Cliristians. The most remarkable example of this is the picture given in ch. 25 of S…
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The passages which seem at first to identify baptism with the gift of the Spirit are especially Ac 238 and 192-«- In 2^8 St. Peter says: 'Repent and be baptized . . . and ye shall receive the gift of the Spirit.' This seems decisive, but in the con- text we are not told that those baptized received the Spirit — only th…
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(4) Innocent I. — In a rescript of 405 to E.xsuperius, bishop of Toulouse, Innocent says : 'Cetera autem quae vel sub nomine Matthiae vel sub nomine lacobi minoris, vol sub nomine Petri et Johannis quae aquodam Leucio scripta sunt (vel sub nomine Andreae quae a Nexo- charide et Leonida philosophis), vel s>ib nomine Th…
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(2) Augustine. — In the controversial WTitings of Augustine against the Manichseans there are manj^ allusions to the Apocryphal Acts. Reference may especially be made to (a) the de Sermone Domini in Monte (i. 20, 6.5), in which allusions can be traced to the Acts of Thomas ; (6) the contra Adimayitum, 17, where allusio…
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(3) Epiphanius. — In the Panarion Epiphanius mentions the Acts of Thomas, Andrew, and John in connexion with the Encratites {Pan. xlvii. 1), the ApostoUci {ib. Lxi. 1), and other heretics (cf. xxx. 16, bdii. 2). But there is no sign of any con- sciousness that there was a Manichsean corpus, or that there was any connex…
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(3) In Myrr/^a.— Thekla left Paul in M>Trha. Here he healed of the dropsy a man named Hermo- krates, who was baptized. But Hermippus the elder son of Hermokrates was opposed to Paul, and the younger son, Dion, died. The text is here full of lacunse, but apparently Paul raised up Dion, and punished Hermippus with bUndne…
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In the Claromontane hst of books of the OT and NT the Acts of Paul comes at the end in the company of ' Barnabae epistula, Johannis revelatio, Actus Apostolorum, Pastor, Actus PauH, Revela- tio Petri,' which suggests somewhat the same judg- ment as that of Eusebius. From the Commentary of Hippolytus on Dn 3'^ it seems…
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Far the best statement of the theology of the Acts is in C. Schmidt's Acta Pauli, 1 83 ff . This also gives full references to earlier literature. 34 ACTS (APOCRYPHAL) ACTS (APOCRYPHAL) 2. The Acts of Peter. — The Acts of Peter is no longer extant in a complete form. " But, apart from late paraphrastic recensions, …
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The place of origin of the Acts of Peter. — There is no unanimity among critics as to the community in which the Acts of Peter was first produced. There is of course a natural tendency to consider in the first place the possibility that the document is Roman. In favoiu: of this view the most com- plete statement is tha…
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The theology of the Acts of Peter. — In general the account given above of the theology of the Acts of Paul will serve also for the Acts of Peter. But in some passages which depend on the Acts of John there is an appearance of a pronounced Modahsm or almost of Docetism. Lipsius and others, who beUeved, with Zahn and Ja…
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Later on, Augustine and other writers against the Manichseans make tolerably frequent mention of the Acts ; a full collection of all the quotations is given by Lipsius, Apokr. Apostelgesch. i. 83 ff. Here, of course, there is no longer any doubt as to the heterodoxy of the book, which is condemned together •Rath the ot…
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The death of Andrew was by crucifixion, but the legend ascribing an unusual shape to the cross used seems to be of later origin. For tln-ee days and three nights he remained on the cross exhort- ing the multitude ; at the end of this time a crowd of 20,000 men went to the proconsul to demand that Andrew should be relea…
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to prison, having administered the sacraments to her and her foster-mother. That morning Mygdonia preaches a sermon to her husband on Jesus as the heavenly bridegroom. Thomas is now ordered by the king and besought by Charisius to make Mygdonia alter her conduct ; but his feeble commands are refuted by her from his own…
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30S203 38 ACTS (APOCR\THAL) ACTS (APOCRITHAL) (d) Of other versiona, the Ethiopic is wholly, the Latin not entirely, useless (cf. Fabricius, Cod. apncr. NT'-, Hamburg, 1903, ii. 687 f. ; Bonnet, Ada ThomcB, 1883, p. 96 ff.). (4) Provenance and date. — For the history of opinion, cf. Harnack, Altchr. Lit., ii. 1 (1…
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AU critics with this last exception, but Preu- schen included (cf., however, his art. in Hennecke, i. 479), agree in ascribing the 'Hymn of the Soul' to Bardesanes or to his school. Bevan {op. cit. p. 5 f.) has shown that it contains just those ' heresies' for which Bardesanes, according to Ephraim, was excluded by the…
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Besides the works already quoted, see F. Cumont, Die or. Rel. im rom. Heidentiim, Lieipzig, 1910; P. Wendland, Die hellenistisch-romische Kuhur, Tubingen, 1907 ; R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, Leipzig, 1910, also Poimandres Stud, z, griech.-dgypt. u. fruhchristl. Lit., do. * The sacramental …
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It is to be noted that the Apostle does not advance any new theory of the first creation. He knew only what every student of Scripture could learn on that subject. He had no new revelation which enabled him either to confirm or to correct the account of the beginning of things which had come down from a remote antiquit…
994 wordsSource & rights
Public-domain historical reference work (1915–1916); OCR text from Internet Archive. Historical scholarship and terminology reflect its era; OCR may contain errors. Verify quotations and current scholarly claims independently.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.