36—37.
333
ais κατηγγείλαμµεν τὸν λόγον τοῦ Κυρίου, πῶς ἔχουσι: 27.1 Βαρνάβας δὲ ἐβουλεύσατο συμπαραλαβεῖν τὸν Ιωάννην τὸν καλούμενον Μάρκον -
\ After πως εχουσι and at commencement of verse Syr. Harcl. mg. prefixes “‘placuit
autem cogitatio Barnabe,” so Blass in β.
eBovAevoaro, but with SABCE τε, 61,
Vulg. verss., so Tisch., W.H., Blass, R.V., Weiss, Wendt, eBovdero; D, Gig.
eBovAevero, so Hilg.
himself represents as his second to the mother-city. We cannot fairly solve this difficulty by cutting the knot with McGiffert, who regards Acts xi. 30 and xv. as = Gal. ii. 1-10, and thinks that Luke found two independent accounts of the same journey, and supposed them to refer to separate events (Apostolic Age, p- 171); or by concluding with Drum- mond, Galatians, p. 78, that the writer ot Acts made a mistake in bringing St. Paul to Jerusalem at the time of the famine, so that Gal. ii. and Acts xv. both refer to his second visit (cf. to the same effect, Wendt, p. 218 (1899), who looks upon the visit described in xi. 25 as a mistake of the author, at all events as regards Paul). But McGiffert and Drummond are both right in emphasising one most important and, as it seems to us, crucial difficulty in the way of the view advocated by Ramsay; if he is correct, it is difficult to see any object in the visit described in Acts xv. After the decision already arrived at in Gal. ii. 1-10: Acts xi. 30, xii. 25, the question then ex hypothesi at issue could scarcely have been raised again in the manner described in Acts xv. Moreover, whilst Ramsay admits that another purpose was achieved by the journey to Jerusalem described in Gal. ii, 1-10, although only as a mere private piece of business, 6. Paul, p. 57, he maintains that the special and primary object of the visit was to relieve the poor. But if the pillars of the Church were already aware, as ex hypothesi they must have been aware, that St. Paul came to Jerusalem bringing food and money for the poor (Acts xi. 29, 30), we may be pardoned for finding it difficult to believe that the ‘‘ one charge alone” (Gal. ii. το) which they gave him was to do the very thing which he actually came for the purpose of doing. If, too, Barnabas and Saul had just been associated in helping the poor, and if the expression 6 καὶ ἐσπούδασα, Gal. ii. 10, refers, as Professor Ramsay holds, to this service, we should hardly have ex- pected Paul to use the first person sin- gular, but rather to have associated Barnabas with himself in his reference
to their work of love and danger. Pro- fessor Ramsay emphasises the fact (Ex- positor, p. 183, March, 1896) that Luke pointedly records that the distribution was carried out to its completion by Barnabas and Saul in person (Acts xii. 25). Why then does Paul only refer to: his own zeal in remembering the poor in Acts xi. 29, and xii. 25 = Gal. ii. 1-10 ? (On the force of the aorist as against Professor Ramsay’s view, see Expositor, March, 1899, p. 221, Mr. Vernon Bartlet’s note.) Gal. ii. 10 should rather be read in the light of 1 Cor. xvi. 1-3; if the first- named Epistle was also the first in point of time, then we can understand how, whilst it contains no specific and definite mention of a collection for the Church at Jerusalem, which is so emphasised in 1 Cor. xvi, 1, 2 Cor. viii. 9, etc., yet the eager desire of the pillars of the Church that the poor in Judza should be remem- bered, and the thought of a fund for supplying their needs, may well have been working in St. Paul’s mind from the earlier time of the expression of that desire and need, Gal. ii. 10, Expositor, November, 1893, ‘* Pauline Collection for the Saints,’ and April, 1894, “The Galatians of St. Paul,” Rendall Hort, Fudaistic Christianity, p. 67.