The narrative, from the point of St. Paul's arrest onwards, abandons its conciseness and gives an extraordinary amount of space to the incidents of his appearance before different tribunals. Bacon notes this in a tone of disapproval ; but he falls too easily a victim to the temjjtation besetting critics who ascribe the form of biblical books to more or less incompetent editors, of attributing dilli- culties to these lay-figures, instead of exerting himself to find out the true explanation. Ramsay ascribes this amplitude to a deliberate plan, kept in view all through the book, by which St. Paul, the representative of Christianity, is made to appear a personage of consideration to Roman officials, who are nearly always favourable to him, not infrequently defending him not only from the violence of the mob but from otBeials who are not Roman ; and from this he infers that the book was written at a date when persecution had been going on for a considerable time. It would be, however, a simpler explanation if the composi- tion of the book had had in some way to do with St. Paul's trial ; for, in that case, it would have been important to clwell on the events since the date when he fell into the custody of Roman officials ; J. Weiss {op. cit. p. 106 f. ) leaves room for this possibility, assuming tliat the principal source stopped here, though insisting on later editorial operations.
(«) Chronology. — The chronology is an extremely difficult question, because the fixed points that seem to be obtained by the sacred history touching on profane history (Aretas, 2 Co IP'-; Herod, Ac 12'-"-=' ; Claudius, ll='-»» 12'-»' ; Felix and Festus, 24=') fail, when closely scrutinized, to remain li.xed. The nearest to an absolutely certain date .seems at present to be the consulshi]) of tiallio (Ac 18'=), which is fixed by an inscription found at Delphi, of which A. Deissmann has given a detailed ac- count in St. Paul, 1912, App. I., p. 24411'. From this it would seem that St. Paul must have been at Corinth, during his seccmd missionary journey, in A.D. 50; and from this point the chronology can be traced both bacdcwards and forwards. St. Paul cannot have been born very long after Jesus ; and it is wonderful to think of any race having the fecundity to produce, within a few years or perhaps months, three such figures as John the B.aptist, Jesus, and St. Paul. It is generally 8up)iosed that Jesns w.as three-and-thirty years of age at the time of His death ; and we cannot be far wrong in
thinking of St. Paul as about fiveandthirtv at tlie time of liis conversion. Kew perhaii>s realize that between bis conversion ami the coniinencenient of his missionary journeys there was an interval of not less than fourteen or lifteon years. To the three great missionary journeys may be assigned some ten years ; whence it follows that, when he reached Rome, he must have been about sixty. In the last Epistle which proceeded from his pen he called himself ' Paul the aged' ; and, althungh this is a phrase elastic enough to have dillercnt meanings in the mouths of dillcrent men, the proba- bility is that he was not far from the threescore years and ten at which the Psalmist placed the term of human life.
The <lates of three recent chronologists (Light- foot, Rani.say, Harnack, quoted in A. E. Garvie, Lifeand Teiirhing of Paul, 1910, p. 181) do not vary much — for the conversion, 34, 33, 30 ; for the first missionary journey, 48, 47, 45 ; for the second mis- sionary journey, 51, 50, 47 ; for the third missionary joumej', 54, 53, 50; for the arrival at Rome, 61, 60, 57.
ii. The Epistles. — Wliereas an ordin.ary letter among us begins with a title of courtesy, addressed to the receiver, and ends with the signature of the ■writer, preceded by some phrase of courtesy or affection, while place and date stand either above or beneath the whole, an ancient letter commenced with the name of the sender, followed by tlie name of the recipient, together with a word of greeting, and it ended with the date and the place of writing. St. Paul developed the greeting into an elaborate form of his own, in which he described both him- self and his correspondents in their relations to God and Christ, and wished them, instead of the goodwill of an ordinary letter, the primary bless- ings of the gospel. Sometimes he went on to ex- press his thankfulness to God for their steadfast- ness in the faith and their progress in •grace, and to pray for their further development. In one or two cases all this was not completed within fewer than a score of verses. If, at the end, he added date and place, these have been lost, with the ex- ception perhaps of fragments ; and the loss is to us a serious one, as it implies much research to fill up the blanks, and the results are more or less conjectural. As a rule the writer dictated to an amanuensis, who might be named in the super- scription, as well as other comrades present when the Epistle was sent away. In one case (Ro 16--) the amanuensis sent a greeting on his own account. The greetings at the close form a striking feature of the Apostle's epistolary style, betraying as they do the width of his sympathies and the warmth of his heart. Sometimes he would take the pen from the amanuensis at the close and add a few weighty words in autograph, to which, we need not doubt, extraordinary interest would be attached by the first readers. From the close of Galatians we gather that his own penmanship was large and sprawling : read, in 6", ' See with how large letters I have written unto you with mine own hand.'