[412] Acts 9:23-25; comp. 2 Cor. 11:32, 33. The window of escape is still shown in Damascus, as is also the street called Straight, the house of Judas, and the house of Ananias. But these local traditions are uncertain.
[413] Gal. 1:18-24; Comp. Acts 9:26, 27.
[414] Acts 22:17-21. It is remarkable that in his prayer he confessed his sin against "Stephen the martyr;" thus making public reparation for a public sin in the city where it was committed.
[415] Acts 11:28-30; 12:25.
[416] "Paul left Athens," says Farrar (I. 550 sq.), "a despised and lonely man. And yet his visit was not in vain .... He founded no church at Athens, but there-it may be under the fostering charge of the converted Areopagite-a church grew up. In the next century it furnished to the cause of Christianity its martyr bishops and its eloquent apologists (Publius, Quadratus, Aristides, Athenagoras). In the third century it flourished in peace and purity. In the fourth century it was represented at Nicaea, and the noble rhetoric of the two great Christian friends, St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, was trained in its Christian schools. Nor were many centuries to elapse ere, unable to confront the pierced hands which held a wooden cross, its myriads of deities had fled into the dimness of outworn creeds, and its tutelary goddess, in spite of the flashing eyes which Homer had commemorated, and the mighty spear which had been moulded out of the trophies of Marathon, resigned her maiden chamber to the honour of that meek Galilaean maiden who had lived under the roof of the carpenter at Nazareth-the virgin mother of the Lord." Yet Athens was one of the last cities in the Roman empire which abandoned idolatry, and it never took a prominent position in church history. Its religion was the worship of ancient Greek genius rather than that of Christ. "Il est been moins disciple de Jésus et de saint Paul que de Plutarque et de Julien," says Renan, St. Paul, p. 208. His chapter on Paul in Athens is very interesting.
[417] In Corinth Paul wrote that fearful, yet truthful description of pagan depravity in Rom. 1:18 sqq. The city was proverbially corrupt, so that korinthiazomai means to practise whoredom, and korinthiastes, a whoremonger. The great temple of Venus on the acropolis had more than a thousand courtezans devoted to the service of lust. With good reason Bengel calls a church of God in Corinth a "laetum et ingens paradoxon (in 1 Cor. 1:2). See the lively description of Renan, St. Paul, ch. VIII. pp. 211 sqq
[418] Weiss (Bibl. Theol. des N. T., 3d ed. p. 202) is inclined to assign the composition of the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians to the period of the imprisonment at Caesarea. So also Thiersch, Reuss, Schenkel, Meyer, Zöckler, Hausrath. See Meyer Com. on Eph. (5th ed. by Woldemar Schmidt, 1878, p. 18), and on the other side, Neander, Wieseler, and Lightfoot (Philippians, 3d ed. 1873, p. 29), who date all the Epistles of the captivity from Rome.
[419] Acts 28:30, 31. Comp. the Epistles of the captivity.
[420] Bengel remarks on Acts 28:31 "Paulus Romae, apex evangelii, Actorum finis: quae Lucas alioqui (2 Tim. 4:11)facile potuisset ad exitum Pauli perducere. Hierosolymis coepit: Romae desinit." The abruptness of the close seems not to be accidental, for, as Lightfoot remarks (Com. on Philippians, p. 3, note), there is a striking parallelism between the Acts and the Gospel of Luke in their beginning and ending, and there could be no fitter termination of the narrative, since it is the realization of that promise of the universal spread of the gospel which is the starting-point of the Acts.
[421] Namely, to Ephesus 1 Tim. 1:3; 2 Tim. 4:13, 20; to Crete, Tit. 1:5 and to Nicopolis, Tit. 3:12.
[422] Phil. 1:25; 2:24; Philem. 22. These passages, however, are not conclusive, for the Apostle claims no infallibility in personal matters and plans; he was wavering between the expectation and desire of speedy martyrdom and further labors for the brethren, Phil. 1:20-23; 2:17. He may have been foiled in his contemplated visit to Philippi and Colosse.
[423] Rom. 15:24, 28. Renan denies a visit to the Orient, but thinks that the last labors of Paul were spent in Spain or Gaul, and that he died in Rome by the sword, a.d. 64 or later (L'Antechrist, 106, 190). Dr. Plumptre (in the Introduction to his Com. on Luke, and in an Appendix to his Com. on Acts) ingeniously conjectures some connection between Luke, Paul's companion, and the famous poet, M. Annaeus Lucanus (the author of the Pharsalia, and a nephew of Seneca), who was a native of Corduba (Cordova) in Spain, and on this basis he accounts for the favorable conduct of J. Annaeus Gallic (Seneca's brother) toward Paul at Corinth, the early tradition of a friendship between Paul and Seneca, and Paul's journey to Spain. Rather fanciful.
[424] Jos. Vita, c. 3. Comp. Plumptre, l.c.
[425] Tertullian (De praescr. haeret. c. 36): "Romae Petrus passioni Dominica adaequatur, Paulus Joannis [Baptistae]exitu coronatur."
[426] Comp. § 26, pp. 250, 257-259.
[427] Ewald (VI. 631) conjectures that Paul, on hearing of the Neronian persecution, hastened back to Rome of his own accord, to bear testimony to Christ, and being seized there, was again brought to trial and condemned to death, a.d. 65. Ewald assumes an intervening visit to Spain, but not to the East.
[428] 2 Tim. 4:6-8. Bengel calls this Epistle testamentum Pauli et cycnes cantio.
[429] 1 Cor. 15:9 (a.d. 57); Eph. 3:8 (a.d. 62); 1 Tim. 3:15 (a.d. 63 or 64?)
[430] A Latin inscription in Spain, which records the success of Nero in extirpating the new superstition, Gruter, Inscript., p. 238, is now commonly abandoned as spurious.
[431] I must here correct an error into which I have fallen with Dr. Wieseler, in my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., p. 342, by reading hupo to terma and interpreting it "before the highest tribunal of the West."epi is the reading of the Cod. Alex. (though defectively written), as I have convinced myself by an inspection of the Codex in the British Museum in 1869, in the presence of Mr. Holmes and the late Dr. Tregelles. The preposition stands at the end of line 17, fol. 159b, second col., in the IVth vol. of the Codex, and is written in smaller letters from want of space, but by the original hand. The same reading is confirmed by the newly discovered MS. of Bryennios.