Literature.— J. Smith, The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul^, 18S0, pp. 74-81 ; W. M. Ramsay, SI. Paul the Tramller and the Roman Citizen, 1S95, p. 320f. ; Conybeare-Howson, S(. Paiii, newed.,lS77, ii. 392f. JAMES STRAHAN.
SALT ((SXs ; also efXat, a form which is rare except in LXX and NT ; adj. aXu/c6s). — This condiment of food was in general use among the civilized nations of antiquity. From the religious significance which it had for the primitive mind, and especially its association with sacrificial meals, it became — and still is throughout the East — a symbol of guest- friendship and fidelity ; from its purifying and antiseptic properties, an image of the power of good men to preserve the moral soundness of society (Mt 5'^) ; and from its piquancy, a suggestion of the relish which wit and wisdom give to talk which would otherwise be insipid. St. Paul exhorts the Colossians to let their speech be 'seasoned with salt ' (iSXari ijpTviMvos, Col 4^), and the salt which he had in mind possessed finer properties than the fiXes and sal of Greek and Latin writers.
Attic ' salt ' was Attic wit. Pliny {HN xxxi. 7) says : ' The higher enjoyments of life could not exist without the use of salt: indeed, so hii^hly necessary is this condiment to mankind, that the pleasures of" the mind can be expressed by no better terra than the word salt (nale^), such being the name given to all effusions of wit.' The meaning of the word is usually in- dicated by the context in which it occurs ; * Sale vero et facetiis Ciesar . . . vicit omnes ' (Cic. de Ofic. I. xxxvii. 133) ; ' facetiarura quidam lepos quo, tanquam sale, perspergatur omnis oratio' (Cic. de Orat. i. 34); *sal niger,* i.e. biting wit, sarcasm (Hor. Ep. II. ii. 60).
St. Paul was of cour.se familiar with this classical ' salt,' which at its best was intellectual acuteness and sparkling wit, but which easily degenerated into eOTpai!-e\la { Epli 5''). There was no lack of it in his university town of Tarsus. But as a Chris- tian he takes the word — like x^P". ayd-n-rj and many another term — and gives it a new and better con- notation. He eliminates from it the bitterness of sarcasm and adds to it the essential grace of Chris- tianity. Without making it less intellectual, he makes it more spiritual. As a lover of good talk, he is far from deprecating what is stimulating and pungent. He desiderates all the old readiness ' to answer each one' (Col 4^''), but the answer will no longer be the repartee which seeks a brilliant personal victory ; it will be the response of the heart that loves still more tlian of the mind that glitters. If the new meaning of the metaphor is to be determined by the context in which it is employed — ' walk in wisdom,' ' let your speech be always with grace' — salt becomes the symbol of a rare combination of virtues. A spiritual wisdom and Christian grace, at once quickening the gifts of Nature and hallowing the charms of culture, are to replace pagan wit as the savour of that human intercourse which is the feast of reason and the flow of souls.
Literature. — Grimm-Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the .Vr2, 1890, s.u. iAw; artt. 'Salf in HDB and EBi; J. B.
Lifhtfoot, St, Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon^ 1879. JaMES STKAHAN.
SALUTATIONS.— Salutations are friendly greet- ings, literary and otherwise, which Christianity took over from the .social life of antiijuity, but tilled with a new content of Divine love and made a symbol of a common brotherhood in Cliriat. Of literary greetings those in Ko 16''" are the most striking and the most puzzling. Here are twenty- live persons and four house-societies, each appar- ently well known to St. Paul, and characterized by him with a particularity as brief as it is discrimin- ating. This by one who had never been in Kome is quite impossible, it is said. Jiilicher says : 'One must presuppose a kind of popular emigration from the Pauline congregations in the East to Kome, in order to find so many friends of the apostle in Rome.' * But there was a constant movement to Kome from all over the Empire, as well as a return- ing tide, and the Apostle with his rare knowledge of societies in Asia and Europe coulil easily have a score of personal friends in the cajiital, as well as an intimate knowledge of the Church there. David Schulz sought the solution in Ephesus, to which Church these words were directed, t Sjiitta claims that the Epistle to Rome is really two Epistles, the second being written from Spain later, after St. Paul knew the Romans from residence.^ But this presupposes a second imprisonment — a point in dispute — and it is not wise to assume it unless necessary. The Acta Pauli (ed. C. Schmidt, Heidelberg, 1905) connects the death of St. Paul with the imprisonment of which we know. But in every city in which St. Paul worked there were Jews and Cliristians personally known to him who were now in Rome; cf. Juv. Sat. iii. 6'2ff., and Strabo, xiv. p. 675 (ed. Amsterdam, 1707, p. 993), where he speaks of the city ' full of Tarseans and Alexandrians.'