Another Philippian woman, Avho was attracted by the Apostle and his message, was well known in the city as a soothsayer (IG'"). She was in the hands of a syndicate of masters who exploited her strange powers, advertising her as the possessor of a Python. According to Plutarch (de Defec. Orac. 9), Python was a name assumed by (yyaaTpl/ivdoi (ventriloquists), persons whom the LXX identifies with diviners. Popularly regarded as inspired by the Pythian Apollo, the girl was evidently no mere impostor, but a person of abnormal gifts and temperament, perhaps with symptoms of epilepsy, who believed herself to be the mouthpiece of a divine power, and gave free expression to her intuitions, often astonishing those who consulted her by the justice and truth of her oracular words. She was irresistibly drawn to the evangelists, rightly divining that they had brought to Philippi another and greater power than that of Apollo. She calls them servants of ' God the Most High ' — an expression widesjiread in paganism, as Ramsay notes (St. Paul, p. 215). St. Paul's mode of saving her is an example of the mighty workings (Swd^eis) of which he speaks (1 Co 1'2-'). An authoritative word in the name of Christ broke the spell of her unhappy possession, and liberated her to serve a new JIaster.
Her conversion Avas the signal for an outburst of pagan hatred, to which St. Paul alludes years afterwards (irpowaddi'Tes Kal vfiptaBivTei . . . iv <t.iXi7nrots [1 Th 2- ; cf. Pli 1'"]). Enraged at the loss of their income (ttjs ipyaaia^, ' business,' ' gain '), the girl's owners avenged themselves by contriv- ing to get the apostles charged with disturbing the
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PHILIPPI
PHILIPPIAJS'S, EPISTLE TO THE
peace and tofioliing a religio illicita. St. Paul and Silas were dragged before the magistrates, scourged without a liearing, and Hung into the innermost prison. Weizsiicker (p. "285) thinks that ' the story is rendered imjiossible by tlie conduct of Paul ; he lets liiniselt be chastised illegally, in order afterwards to secure greater satisfaction. Paul could not have acted so.' l?ut in the tumult he may well have made a protest which was drowned by a babel of hostile voices. Or who will blame him if he sometimes chose to suffer in silence — rpis ippa^SlaBritt (1 Co 11") — like ordinary Chris- tians, who could not shelter themselves under the ajgis of the Roman citizenship?
The magistrates of Philippi are first called ipxix^f^ (16'") and then (rTpaT-q-fol (vv.'"- '-• '°- "'• ^). Kamsay (St. Paul, p. 217) thinks that the two clauses, ' dragged them into the agora before the rulers,' and 'brought them before the mag'istrates' (yy_i9. 20)_ mean the same thing, and holds that if St. Luke had revised his narrative he would have struck out the one or the other. Blass says, ' non licet distinguere inter dpxoyns et arpaTTiyot' {Acta Apostolorum, 1895, p. 180). The former is the ordinary term for the supreme board of magistrates in a Greek town, the latter the popular equivalent of prcetores. St. Luke knew no doubt that in a colonia like Philippi the highest governing power w^as in the hands of duumviri (see inscriptions in J. B. Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 51), the exact trans- lation of which would have been Sio ivSpe^, but he preferred good Greek to slavishly technical accuracy on such a point. His use of arpnTriyol, therefore, does not prove either that the magistrates of Philippi had duly received the dignity of the prictorship, or that they had assumed it without leave, as provincial duumviri were said sometimes to do (Cicero, de Leg. Aqr. ii. 34).
St. Luke is characteristically careful to make it clear that the majesty of Roman law might have been invoked against the Philippian authorities and on behalf of the apostles. By illegally punishing Roman citizens — Silas was apparently one as well as St. Paul (16^') — the magistrates had rendered themselves liable to be degraded and counted unlit ever to hold office again (Cicero, in Vcrr. II. v. 66). The scourging and imprisoning were acts of high-handed violence. The accused were subjected to these indignities ' without a trial ' ; that is the meaning of the word aKaTaKpirovs, which is translated ' uncondemned ' (16"). In the end the magistrates saved themselves by begging the prisoners to leave the town quietly, and the historian's point is that in acceding to this request the apostles forfeited the unquestionable right to appeal against a gross maladministration of justice.
Many writers regard the story of the earthquake and the conversion of the jailer as legendary. H. J. Holtzmann asserts that this is the view of the whole critical school (' Apostelgeschichte ' in Hand-Kom. zum NT i. [188U] 389). The inter- pretation of such a passage is natxirally afl'ected by one's whole attitude to the miraculous. The older view is defended by Ramsay, whose acquaint- ance with Turkish prisons helps him to remove some of the diilioulties of the narrative {St. Paul, pp. 220-222).
Five years later, probably in the autumn of A.D. 55, St. Paul re-visited Macedonia, giving the believers ' much e.\hortation ' (20^) ; and in the spring of the following year, having unexpectedly to begin his journey from Greece to Palestine by land instead of by sea, he had the happiness of keeping the Passover with the brethren of Philippi (v.^). None of his converts gave him the same unalloyed satisfaction as the Philippians, his ' beloved and longed for,' his 'joy and crown' (Ph 4"). He re-