ESTAMENT, vol. i. p. 422), the apostle in the course of his second missionary journey crossed for the first time from Asia, and having set foot on European ground at the seaport of Neapolis,
ushed on without delay to the mother city of Philippi, where suflicient stay was made to preach and found a Church. His companions were, from Antioch Silas (Ac 15“), from Lystra Timothy (16°), from Troas Luke (16°, where the first person plural commences in the narrative).
St. Luke describes Philippi as τρώτη τῆς μερῖδος Μακεδε,ικι πόλις πολωνία, 8 phrase which, as it stands, must mean either ‘the first city in rank,’ or ‘the first city they came to,’ in (that) district of Macedonia. The objections to either inter pretation are serious. (1) age was not the first city in rank, for Thessaloniva was the capital of Macedonia as a whole, while in 5.Ε. Macedonia, Amphipolis, distant only 80 miles from Philippi, was not only the capital of the region in the original Roman tetrarchy (see above), but was still in St. Luke's day much more than its equal in importance: Amphipolis had a separate issue of coins for the reign of each of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, while for the same period Philip; was apparently content with two, one under August. | one under Claudius, (2) Nor is the translation ‘first cit come to’ any more satisfactory. Asa matter of fact the ay first set foot in Neapolis; and in 50 far as Neapolis was Thracias (so Bp. Lightfoot, Philippians 4, p. 60, n. 1), Philippi must have been the same, since oo was in the territory of Philips CIL m. 1. p. 120). And if the geography of this interpreta a doubtful, its grammar is impossible: «pare is never used this sense without qualifying words (Field, Notes on the Trans lation of the New Teast. ad loc., ἢ DE πρώτη Mare εὖν Γκλν φίαν, σρώτη . .. σρόέ MATHIAS Pm τυ νει a” “Ay ‘ Moreover, in either translation the ree before sap ter is intole ably awkward, and so the older scribes felt: B drope the article and the Bezan reviser (9) titutes for epere rer mapa the single word «spas.
e
Sanne, Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1899, p, 116,
follows Head, Historia Numorum, p. 192, in adding WVietriz but Mommsen, ΟἹ, m1. |. 660, denies the title ; and it does not seem to be sulficiently proved from the coins.
838 PHILIPPI
Hort (New Testament in Greek, Appendix, ad loc.) attempted to escape these difficulties by reading [spider for μερίδος, ‘achief city of Pierian Macedonia.’ But if we are to emend, it is better to read aperns for σ᾿ τῆς, ‘a city of the first region of Macedonia and a colony.’ simple emendation—it may have arisen either by the accidental reduplication of the letters τη, or from a mis- understanding of the correction if by mistake πρώτην was written originally, and -rys written over it to correct it—occurred first to Joannes Lent eae a Blass, Philology of the Gospels, p. 63, but we have not been able to verify the statement) and to the unnamed friend of an English divine, James Peirce (see Peirce’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, ed. 1, A.D. 1725, ed. 2, a.d. 1733, p. 8, and L. M. Artemonius, Initium Evangelit S. Johannis, a.p. 1726, pt. i. p. 211); and in our own day occurred independently to Field, op. cit. p. 124, Blass, loc. cit. and Acta Apost: m, ad loc., and to the present writer. The only possible objections appear to be (L.) that μερίς does not mean a district or region (Hort, loc, cit.); and (ii.) that though Philippi had belonged to the ‘first region,’ the whole division into tetrarchies fallen out of memory long before. But as to (i.) μερίς is in fact found as a term for subdivisions of the Egyptian ‘nomes’ (Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 158, note); as to (ii.) there is nothing in our a ὑ knowledge to justify so sweeping an assertion A
St. Paul was always accustomed to commence his mission within the sphere of the religious or-
anization of Judaism. But Philippi—unlike the Cypriot towns, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Thessa- lonica, Bercea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus (Ac 13°: 14! 171-10. 17 184. 198)—possessed apparently no syn- agogue, so small was the number and importance of the Jews there, and on the Sabbath St. Paul found the few Jewish worshippers at prayers beyond the gates of the city by the riverside. If we ask our- selves why under such circumstances St. Paul stopped at Philippi, the most probable answer is that what attracted him was exactly the feature which accounted for the paucity of Jews, namely, that it was not an ordinary Greek town but a Ro- man colony: Rome and things Roman were upper- most in the mind of St. Paul.
The reading of the Textus Beers ig οὗ ἰνομίζετο προσευχὴ εἶναι, ‘where there was accustomed to be prayer’; and Blass’s conjecture, ad loc., ἐνόμιζον ἐν προσευχῇ εἶναι, gives a similar sense, The Western authorities, however Osea προσευχὴ εἶναι, D; oratio esse uidebatur, latt.), as well as Westcott and Hort (ivouiZous προσιυχὴν εἶναι, but no single uncial gives exactly this reading), say nothing about the itual character of the worship there; and it would be possible, if St. Paul’s visit could coincide with one of the great Jewish fasts (those of the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th months, Zec 819), to suppose that the riverside worship was due only to the solemnities of theday. Compare Tertullian, de ieiunio 16, ‘Iudaicum certe iejunium ubique celebratur, cum omissis templis per omne littus quocumque in aperto aliquando iam precem ad cw#lum mittunt’ ; by which we ought perhaps to interpret the more general words of the Decree of the Halicar- nassians (Josephus, Antiquities, XIV. X. 23), τὰ σάββατα ἄγειν καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ συντελεῖν... . mal τὰς προσευχὰς ποιεῖσθαι: πρὸς TH βαλάττη κατὰ τὸ πάτριον ἴθος, Where no seashore was available, any open place, quocumque in aperto, appears to have answered the purpose. It will be noted that both authorities specially mention ‘prayer’ or ‘prayers’as the distinguishing mark of this open-air service, just as St. Luke does for Philippi.* On the whole it is more probable that we are to understand that the open space by the river was the normal scene of what Jewish worship there was at Philippi.