autliorities, i.e. the head of the Temple police {crTparriyds ToO lepov) ami the Sadilucees (Ac 4') ; and, if their freedom of speech was somewhat curtailed, tills was not because of their attitude to the Temple and its services, which was evidently quite correct, hut simply because they were said to bo exciting the multitude and disturbing the peace. The re- proof administered to them was as mild as their conlinemeiit was brief ; and the Christian Jews, finding that they could not be exchuled from the Temple precincts, continued to make Solomon's Porch their ordinary rendezvous (5'-). A second arrest of apostles followed, but the report has it that the angel who released tlieni bade them go and speak in the Temple all the words of this life (o'"'-"), and accordingly they are again found stand- ing there and teaching the people (5-^). Until the appearance of Stephen created a new situation, the apostles were daily in the Temple, teaching and preaching Jesus as the Messiah. Against so strict and thoroughgoing Jews the guardians of the national religion, as embodied in the Temple and its cultus, had no ground of complaint, and the apostles on their side ' could still cherish the hope that the nation at large might be brought to turn and bow the knee to its true Messiah ' (Hort, op. cit. , p. 45 f . ). For the present the bearing of their teaching upon the Temple itself was but dimly, if at all, perceived, and wholly unexpressed. 2. Stephen and the Temple. — It was the proto- mart}'r that brought Christisinity into open conflict with Judaism. His attitude to the Temple has been variously understood. He was accused of speaking ' blasphemous words against Moses, and against the law ' (Ac 6"), of ceasing not ' to speak words against this holy place and the law'(v.'^). C. von Weizsacker (Apostolic Age, Eng. tr., i.* [London, 1897] 64) holds that his speech does not by any means refute the grounds of complaint. On the contrary, it is at least in part equivalent to a substantial justification of the doctrine com- plained of, since it declares at its close that the worship of God in this temple ' made with hands ' had never been in accordance with the will of God. F. Spitta {Die Apostelgcschirhte, Halle, 1891, p. 105 f.) also thinks that the building of the Temple is represented by Stephen as an unauthor- ized and presumptuous act. Teaching of such a kind, however, would have brought Stephen into collision not only with the Hellenistic Jews, but with the whole body of Christians in Jerusiilem. It seems much more likely that he made no theo- retical attack upon the Mosaic Law, while his declaration that ' the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands' (l^-^") was so far from being new that it merely echoed the words of Solomon at the dedication of the first Temple (1 K 8-''). It was not the worship but the spirit of the worshippers that aroused his scornful indigna- tion. Warning them, in the manner of the old prophets, that no amount of attention to outward ordinances could ever secure the favour of God. he demanded a spiritual as opposed to a mechanical religion. If he was in the habit of repeating Christ's prediction of the destruction of the Temple at the Parousia — and this was probably what gave colour to the charges made against him — he in- terpreted tliat threat not as an abrogation of the Mosaic Law, hut as a judgment upon the nation for its sin. The third Temple might fall as the first had fallen, and yet the Torah itself remain intact. 'To call Stephen a forerunner of Paul, and to think of him as anticipating in any way Paul's treatment of the Jewish law and his asser- tion of a free Gentile Christianity, is to misunder- stand him ' (McGillert, op. rit., p. 89). For him, as for every other Jewish Christian in Jerusalem, the Law, without distinction of moral and cere-
monial precepts, was 'ordained of angels'; in his view the nation's treatment of its prophets and its Messiah was the supreme proof tliat the Law had not been kei)t ; and the burden of liis preaching w.as a call to Jerusalem not to close her Temple and abolish her ritual, but to take the lead in a national repentance for a broken Law.
3. St. Paul and the Temple.— The recognition of the validity of a Christianity to which Jerusalem and the Temjile were negligiole quantities was the result of a protracted controversy in which St. Paul was the champion of freedom. For him the observance of the ancient ritual law\s and tradi- tions, which had so long been a matter of principle, becomes at last one of indill'erence. He is conse- quently accused of ' teaching all the .lews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses' (Ac 21°'). This he never did, and, to prove that the charge was groundless, he was advised, during his last visit to Jerusalem, to conciliate the great mass of Christian Jews by performing the vow of a Nazirite in the Temple. Weizsacker thinks that in the whole narrative of this episode ' practically nothing is historical ' [op. cit., ii. [London, 1895] 14 ; but McGiflert holds ' that Paul may mcII have done just what he is reported to have done ' (nj). cit. , p. 343). Had he been advised by James to prove tliat he habitually observed the Law as a matter of conscience, he could never have consented. But he had long been in the habit of identifying him- self in things non-essential now witli Jews and now with Gentiles in order that he might ' win some of them' (1 Co 9™), and the last instance of conform- ity was merely the most striking. What impres- sion the object-lesson actu.ally made upon the law- abiding Christian Jews for whom it was specially intended is not recorded ; but it clearly had other results which were not anticipated, for the Jews rose in arms against St. Paul as a profaner of the Temple, and the Romans arrested him as a dis- turber of the peace.