554
himself suggested that the Jews in Asia eught to be summoned, or to be present, xxiv. I9. That such delays would not be unusual we may learn from Tacitus, ε.ρ., Ann., xiii., 43; of. Suet., Nero, 15. When we remember how long a delay occurred in the case of the Jewish priests, the friends of Josephus, Vita,
id
3, who were sent to Rome by Felix te: plead their cause, it ceases to be sur- prising that St. Paul was detained 5ο
long without a trial; see on the whole
question Lewin, St. Paul, ii., 277 ff.; Lightfoot, Phil., p. 4; Knaben-. bauer, Actus Apostolorum, pp. 453, 454: 1899.
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CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH AT ROMER.
Or the beginnings of Christianity in Rome nothing whatever is known on direct evidence. The tradition which assigns the founding of the Church there to Peter cannot possibly be maintained. In one form it assumes that Peter, on the occasion referred to in Acts xii. 17, travelled to Rome, and there propagated the Church from the synagogue as acentre. As this departure of Peter from Jerusalem took place, on the usual reckoning, about 42 a.p., there would be time for his twenty-five years’ episcopate of Rome, which was once the accepted Romish idea, though now given up even by Romish scholars. But it is clear from the book of Acts (chap. xv.) that Peter was in Jerusalem ten years after this, and it is equally clear from the Epistle to the Romans that he had not been in Rome when this letter was written, seven years later still. In face of a passage like chap. xv. 20 it is impossible to suppose that the Church of Rome had already been the scene of another Apostle’s labours. Three years later, when Paul at length arrived in Rome, it had still been unvisited by Peter, to judge from what we read in Acts xxviii.; and even when he wrote the Epistle to the Philippians, towards the close of his first imprisonment, there is no indication that his brother Apostle had yet seen the capital. The earliest tradition represents Peter and Paul as in Rome together, and, indeed, as suffering together, in the Neronian persecution. All the evidence for this will be found in Euseb., Hist. Eccl., I1., xxv. What the worth of it is, it is not easy to say. It is not incredible that Peter may have been in Rome about the date in question, especially if Babylon in 1 Peter ν. 13 means Rome, as it does in the Apocalypse. But in any case Peter can have had no direct part in founding the Church. In Iren., iii., 1, 2, Peter and Paul are spoken of as “ preaching the Gospel in Rome, and founding the Church,” at the time that Matthew published his gospel.