424 CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
corresponds with the first of Ac ; the second of Ac is omitted ; and the second of Gal answers to the third of Ac (A.D. 49).
rniis connexion of Gal Zi-io with Ac 16 Is generally accepted, and a strong argument for it is the common atmosphere of crisis which pervades both narratives, told though they are from different points of view. Ilamsay, however {St. Paul, pp. 153- 166), strongly maintains that the second visit of Gal can only be the second of Acts. Some of his points have been answered here by anticipation ; some illustrate the viicrotogie which Hamack, not wholly without cause, attributes to him, e.g., that the same visit cannot be said in St. Paul to have been »a.ra. tcirojMAi^f*, Oal 2'-^, in St. Luke to have been by commission from the Church of Antioch, as though the Spirit and the Church never spoke in harmony. Very attractive, however, is the identification of St. Paul's 'emissaries from James* ^Gal 213 Toi- ixtJi7» mati irri 'XoLxiiSov) with St. Luke's * emissaries from Judsea ' (Ac 161 ruit mmTikllotrtt aci Wf 'lotjot^af), for this would make St. Peter's destrtion of the Gentile Christians at Antioch to precede and not to follow his championship of their cause at Jerus., and would be a real point of superiority over the common view that St. Peter and ,St. James gave a formal pledge of brotherhood, and then violated it. But this identification of the two Judaizing missions from Jerus. to .\ntioch may be accepted side by side with the ordinary view that Gal ■2'ff- = Ac 16, \f Gal. 211-1'* i^ allowed in order of time to precede Gal 21-10. There is nothing like the i«-ijTa of Gal 118- 2l 21 to suggest that the chronological series is continued. On the contrary, St. Paul's argument may per- haps he best paraphrased as follows : ' I have not received my gospel from the elder apostles. I went up to their headquarters at Jerus., not on my conversion, but first at an interval of 3 years, and then at one of 14 ; the first a private visit, the second i an official one, when I treated with them, and was recognized by them, on equal terms. So far from simply submitting to them, I once publicly rebuked their chief on the occasion when he was on my ground at Antioch, and backed out of his own liberal principles under pressure from representatives of James.* If this interpretation be correct, Ramsay has failed indeed to prove his main point, but has shown the way to a subsidiary rearrangement of much importance. The dispute at Antioch may then be placed in the winter (A.D. 48-49) before the Council, at w-hich St. Peter 'employs to others the argument that had convinced himself.*]
Date of St. Paul's Conversion. — The second visit of Galatians being thus identified with the Council, the date has already been fixed as in all probability A.D. 49 (above, p. 422») ; and this visit itself was ' at an interval of 14 years ' {5(A SeKareaaipuv irCiv, Gal 21), while the first visit was ' 3 years after' the conversion [lieri. rpla trri. Gal 1'^). But are the 14 years of the ''econd visit also to be reckoned from the conversion (11 years, therefore, from the first visit), with Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 382, or from the first visit (17 from tlie conversion), with Lightfoot, ad lor. ? The Greek suits either alternative ; the argument favours the former, for St. Paul would natural ly state the intervals at the highest possible figure. The first of the synchronisms established above (p. 416") gives weight to the same side ; when St. Paul came to Jems, on his first visit, he liad just fled from the ethnarch of Aretas at Damascus (2 Co 11*' = Ac 9"- *"), and Aretas probably did not become master of Damascus till A.D. 37. But the addition of the 3 to the 14 years would throw back the first visit to A.D. 35-36, probably beyond the time of Aretas, and the conversion to A.D. 3'2-33, whereas the inclusion of the 3 in the 14 would put the conversion in A.D. 35-36, and the first visit nnder Aretas in A.D. 38.
(C) The first half of the Acts : chs. 1-12.
Tlius, from the dates established in the second half of the Acts, it is possible, by means of the Epistles, to argue back to the first half of the Acts and to reach two rough dates for the con- version of St. Paul (Ac 9"^'), A.D. 35-36, and for his first visit to Jerus. (Ac 9™), A.D. 38. It re- mains only to adjust, by the help of the.se points, the division into perio<ls (see p. jil""), which is the single hint at a chronology supplied by St. Luke in the earlier part of liis work. St. Paul's con- version apparently followed not very long after St. Stephen's martyrdom, and that, in turn, is the first event recordeil in the 2nd section of the Acts (91 8* 6'"). The first period of relatively undisturbed progress will then end about A.D. 35, having covered six years from A.D. 29. The second
period, marking a commencement, but only a com- mencement, of conflict, begins in A.D. 35, and the last event mentioned in it is St. Paul's first visit to Jerus., A.D. 38 ; but the peaceful development implied in the summary of tnis period (9") justi- fies, perhaps, the extension of the period as far as A.D. 39-40. The third period ends with the record of advance in 12", after the death of Herod in A.D. 44, and before St. Paul's second visit (at any rate before its conclusion) at the time of the famine in A.D. 46, and lasts altogether from A.D. 39-40 to, say, A.D. 45. That the chronology here adopted results in a more or less even division of periods — i. from a.d. 29 ; ii. from A.D. 35 ; iiL from A.D. 39-40 ; iv. from A.D. 45-46 ; v. from A.D. 50 ; vi. from A.D. 55 (to A.D. 61) — such as St. Luke seems to be contemplating, must be con- sidered a slight step towards its verification. On the other hand, Harnack's chronology, which puts St. Paul's conversion in the same year as the Crucifixion, or, at latest, in the following, allotting even in the latter case no more than about 18 months to Ac li-9", neglects these period-divisions altogether.