there be The evidence of the Epistles of bot
the Pauline captivities is also negative. If St. Peter had been in the city when St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, and again to the Colossians and Philemon, his description in the one case of the fortunes of the gospel at Rome, and in the other of his own environment, could hardly have been un- influenced by the fact. We turn to the one Epistle of the second captivity. If we accept the constant tradition of the Church that St. Paul suffered in the Neronian persecution (t.e. shortly after July 64),2Ti can hardly be placed in the year 64; for the apostle seems to iene orward to a winter not far distant (ταχέως, πρὸ χειμῶνος, 4°21), It appears, therefore, that 2 Ti was written some two or three nionths before the winter of 63 closed the seas. The lan- guage of this Epistle (41°*-) shows that St. Peter was not in Rome when it was written. The supposition that he arrived in Rome for the first time after 2 Ti was written hardly allows the time which the early patristic notices of his work there (see above) postulate. We are led, therefore, to the conclu- sion that St. Peter’s arrival at Rome must in all probability be placed after the last of the Epistles of St. Paul’s first captivity, and long enough before 2 Ti to allow St. Peter to have left the city when that Epistle was written, after having worked there some considerable time. Early tradition, however, gives us one further clue to the time. The two apostles worked together. Now it is almost impossible to suppose that, after St. Paul had once taken the apostolic oversight of the Church’s work in Rome, St. Peter could, apart from St. Paul, have planned to visit there. But did the suggestion that he should come to Rome reach St. Peter from St. Paul himself? It is abundantly clear (1) that St. Paul’s mind was set on avert- ing any rupture between Jewish and Gentile Christians, and on welding them together in the one Church (Hort, Ecclesia p. 281 ff.) ; (2) that in his view Rome was the key to the evangelization of the empire; (3) that he was keenly alive in his own case to the importance of one who was the cea ea representative of one side of the Church’s work visiting now the Mother Church at Jern- salem, now the Church in the capital of the empire ; (4) that the problem of reconciling the two great elements in the Church presented itself in a concrete form in Rome (Ph 1"**-), and that in Rome he grasped, as even he had never done before, the greatness of the issues involved (Eph
PETER (SIMON)
9... 416, His evangelistic policy could find no truer or more practical expression than a request to St. Peter to visit Rome while he himself was still there. Such an invitation would be a fitting corollary of the Ep. to the Ephesians. If the Churches saw the Apoule of the Gentiles and the leader of the Apostles of the Circumcision taking counsel together and working together at Rome, they would learn the lesson of the unity of the Church as they could learn it in no other way. Moreover, St. Paul looked forward to his cap- tivity soon ending. Even if he were set at liberty, he was pledged to undertake distant journeys. Whatever, therefore, the issue might be, the Church in Rome would be deprived of his im- mediate guidance ; and as the far-reaching needs and opportunities of that Church pressed on him, he might well realize how manifold would be the gain resulting from the presence there of St. Peter. It is therefore a conjecture, but a con- jecture supported by no inconsiderable amount of indirect evidence, that St. Paul summoned St. Peter to Rome. It is possible that St. Mark, whom we know to have been the companion of St. Peter, was with St. Paul when he wrote to the Colossians as the messenger and the forerunner of St. Peter. If this account of St. Peter’svisit to Rome is correct, it will follow that he arrived there towards the end of St. Paul’s first captivity, per- haps in the spring of 61. His absence from Rome when St. Paul wrote 2 Ti we may perhaps explain on the supposition that he had been summoned to Jerusalem in connexion with the death of St. James and the appointment of his successor.* He must have returned to Rome before July 64.
2. The Simonian legend. —The most probable account of its genesis is that it grew out of a mistaken identity (Salmon, art. ‘Simon Magus,’ in Dict. Chr. Biog. iv. p. 682 ff.). With the Simon of Ac 8 another Simon of Samaria was confused. This latter Simon was a Gnostic teacher, who prob- ably lived at the end of the Ist cent. The confusion meets us as early as Justin Martyr, who, express- ing probably a general opinion, gave the latter Simon a kind of primacy among heretics. He either himself visited Rome or gained a reputation there through his followers. ‘The strange blunder about the statue can hardly have been a private aberration of Justin’s, since it is found in the Gnostic Acts of Petert—a document which seems to be quite independent of Justin’s influence. But when once Simon Magus had been promoted to the first place among heretics, it was natural that the conflict between him and the chief of the apostles, related in the Acts, should be prolonged into a drama of controversy, the earlier scenes of which were laid in the towns of Syria, while the final denouement was reserved for Rome, which both combatants were believed to have visited. In the development of the story considerations of time were boldly disregarded. On the one hand, the last scenes of the drama had to be enacted in the reign of Nero in order to connect them with the fact that St. Peter suffered under that emperor. On the other hand, it was natural to bring Simon to Rome not so very long after the events recorded in the Acts—in the reign of Claudius (Justin, Apol. i. 26); and it seemed fitting that St. Peter