[91] The Antiochenes were always famous for the dangerous power of ridicule and giving nicknames. They quarrelled on this account with the emperors Hadrian, Verus, Marcus, Severus, and Julian. The last mentioned has celebrated these tendencies in his celebrated treatise entitled _Misopogon, or the Beard-hater_. Even in its final overthrow the city preserved this distinction. In the year 540 the Persian king Chosroes Nushirvan took it by storm. When he appeared before the city he was received with a shower of arrows mingled with obscene sarcasms, which so enraged him that he removed the inhabitants when he had taken the town to a new Antioch in the province of Susa.
Finally, we notice in connexion with Antioch that the foundation of the great Gentile Church was marked by the same universal impulse which we trace wherever Christ was effectually preached. The faith of the Crucified evermore produced love to the brethren. Agabus, a prophet whom we shall again meet many years after in the course of St. Paul's life, and who then predicted his approaching arrest and captivity at Jerusalem, made his earliest recorded appearance at Antioch, where he announced an impending famine. Agabus exercised the office of a prophet, which implied under the New Dispensation rather the office of preaching than of prediction. Prediction, indeed, whether under the Old or the New Dispensation, formed but a small portion of the prophetical office. The work of the prophet was pre-eminently that of telling forth God's will and enforcing it upon a careless generation. Occasionally indeed, as in the case of Agabus, that telling forth involved prediction or announcement of God's chastisements and visitations; but far oftener the prophet's work was finished when he enforced the great principles of truth and righteousness as the Christian preacher does still. Agabus seems to have been specially gifted in the direction of prediction. He announced a famine as impending over the whole world, which came to pass in the age of Claudius, offering to the Gentile Church of Antioch an opportunity, of which they gladly availed themselves, to repay somewhat of the spiritual obligation which the Gentiles owed to the Jews according to St. Paul's own rule: "If the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, they owe it to them also to minister unto them in carnal things."[92] We can trace here the force and power of ancient Jewish customs. We can see how the mould and form and external shape of the Church was gained from the Jew. The Jewish colony of Antioch had been of old famous for the liberality of its gifts to the mother community at Jerusalem. The predominant element in the Church of Antioch was now Gentile, but still the ancient customs prevailed. The Gentile Christian community acted towards the Jerusalem Church as the Jewish community had been used to treat their countrymen: "The disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren that dwelt in Judæa: which also they did, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul."
[92] This famine is thoroughly historical. It is noticed by several who wrote of this time, as Dion, lx., 11; Suetonius, Claud., 20; Aurelius, Victor; and is confirmed by the testimony of the coins: see Eckhel, vi., 238, 239, 240. Cf. Lewin's _Fasti Sacri_, p. 274, A.D. 42.