in Gal. il. 9 (cf. Acts xii. 17, xxi. 18). At the same time ver. 22 shows us that neither the authority of St. James nor that of the other Apostles is conceived of as overriding the general consent of the whole Church.—pi παρενοχλεῖν: only here in N.T.; ‘not to trouble,’ A. and R.V.; it may be possible to press the παρά, ‘not to trouble further,” ἐ.ε., by anything more than he is abont to mention, or in their conversion to God. The verb is found with dative and accusative in LXX; for the former cf. Judg. xiv. 17, 1 Macc. x. 63 SR, xii. 14; and for the latter Jer. xxvi. (xlvi.) 27, 1 Macc. x. 35. Bengel takes παρά as = preter, but whilst it is very doubtful how far the preposition can be so rendered here, he adds fides guieta non obturbanda. —rois ἐπισ. cf. xi. 21, “who are turn-
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αἵματος: 41. Μωσῆς γὰρ ἐκ γενεῶν ἀρχαίων κατὰ πόλιν τοὺς. κηρύσσοντας αὐτὸν ἔχει ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς κατὰ πᾶν σάββατον
ἀναγινωσκόμενος.
1 Blass in B brackets whole verse on the ground of its omission by Irenzus, but the latter may easily have omitted it as superfluous or irrelevant to his argument, whilst the obscurity of the verse has been well noted as a reason for its retention.
ing to God”; present participle, as in acknowledgment of a work actually in progress.
Ver. 20. ἐπιστεῖλαι (xxi. 25), Heb. xiii, 22; the verb is used of a written injunction, Westcott, /. ο. (so Wendt here and in xxi. 25, and so Klostermann), and so often in ecclesiastical writers; here it may mean to write or enjoin, or may well include both, cf. Hort, Ecclesia, p. 70, Westcott, µ. s., Weiss, 7m loco ; in classical Greek it is used in both senses. In LXX it is not used, except in a few passages in which the reading is doubt- ful, ἀπ. for ἐπ., see Hatch and Redpath, sub υ.--τοῦ ἀπέχεσθαι: Burton, N. T. Moods and Tenses, p. 159, ¢f. Jer. vii. 1Ο, 1 Pet. ii. 11,1 Tim. iv. 3 ; generally without ἀπό.---τῶν ἀλισγημάτων: from Hellen- istic verb, ἀλισγεῖν, LXX, Dan. i. 8, Mal. i. 7, 12, Ecclus. xl. 29 (S, a); may mean the pollution-from the flesh used in heathen offerings = εἰδωλοθύτων in ver. 29 (xxi. 25), cf. I Cor. viii. I, x. 14 ff., but see further Klostermann, Probleme im Aposteltexte, p. 144 ff., and Wendt, 1888 and 1899, 7 loco. The phrase stands by itself, and the three fol- lowing genitives are not dependent upon it. If St. James’s words are interpreted more widely than as = εἰδωλοθύτων, ver. 29, they would involve the prohibition for a Christian not only not to eat anything offered to idols, or to share in the idola- trous feasts, but even to accept an invita- tion to a domestic feast of the Gentiles or at least to a participation in the food on such an occasion. That it was easy for Christians to run these risks is evident from 1 Cor, viii. το when St. Paul refers to the case of those who had not only eaten of the flesh offered to idols, but had also sat down to a feast in the idol’s temple.—rijs πορνείας: the moral ex- planation of this close allocation of idolatry and uncleanness is that the former so often involved the latter. But Dr. Hort whilst pointing out that such an association is not fanciful or acciden- tal, reminds us that we ought not to lay too much stress on the connection, since many forms of idolatry might fairly be regarded as free from that particular
stain. The language, however, of St. James in his Epistle shows us how im- perative it was in the moral atmosphere of the Syria of the first century to guard the Christian life from sexual defilement, and the burning language of St. Paul in 1 Cor. vi. 15 and 1 Thess. iv. 3, etc., shows us the terrible risks to which Christian morality was exposed, risks enhanced by the fact that the heathen view of impurity was so lax throughout the Roman empire, cf. Horace, Sat., i., 2, 31; Terence, Adelphi, i., 2,21; Cicero, Pro Calio, xx.; and on the intimate and almost universal connection between the heathen religious guilds and societies and the observance of nameless breaches of the Christian law of purity, see Loen- ing, Die Gemeindeverfassung des Ur- christenthums, and his references to Fou- cart, p. 12 ff. Without some special prohibition it was conceivable that a man might pass from some scene of licentious indulgence to the participation in the Supper of the Lord (Plumptre, Felten). An attempt has been made to refer the word here to the sin of incest, or to marriage within,the forbidden de- grees, rather than to the sin of fornica- tion, so Holtzmann, Ritschl, Z6éckler, Wendt, Ramsay; but on the other hand Meyer, Ewald, Godet, Weiss, and others take the word in its general sense as it is employed elsewhere in the N.T. From what has been said above, and from the way in which women might be called upon to serve impurely in a heathen temple (to which religious obli- gation, as Z6éckler reminds us, some have seen a reference in the word here, cf. also Wendt, p. 332 (1888)), we see the need and the likelihood of such a specific enjoinder against the sin of for- nication. Bentley conjectured χοιρείας. or πορκείας.- -τοῦ πνικτοῦ: “from that which has been strangled,” lit., such beasts as had been killed through stran- gling, and whose blood had not been let out when they were killed. For this prohibition reference is usually made to Lev. xvii. 13, Deut. xii. 16, 23, so Weiss, Wendt, Zéckler, Plumptre, Felten, Hac- kett. But on the other hand Dr Hort