Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

There are great names, however, opposed to this view, which seem enough to overpower almost any testimony that can be brought in defense of an interpretation which they reject. Among these are Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, Ernesti, and Bloomfield, whose very names will perhaps weigh more with many, than the hasty statement of the contrary view which I am able here to give. Yet I am not wholly without the support of high authorities; for De Dieu, Bengel, Heinrichs, Hammond, and Oecumenius, reject the distributive sense here.

THE CURE OF THE CRIPPLE.

In the course of these regular religious observances, about the same time or soon after the events just recorded, Peter and John went up to the temple to pray, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the usual hour for the second public prayers. As they went in at the outer gate of the temple, which being made of polished Corinthian brass, was for its splendor called the Beautiful, their attention was called to one of the objects of pity which were so common on those great days of assembly, about the common places of resort. A man, who, by universal testimony, had been a cripple from his birth, was lying in a helpless attitude at this public entrance, in order to excite the compassion of the crowds who were constantly passing into the temple, and were in that place so much under the influence of religious feeling as to be easily moved by pity to exercise so prominent a religious duty as charity to the distressed. This man seeing Peter and John passing in, asked aims of them in his usual way. They both instantly turned their eyes towards him, and looking earnestly on him, Peter said, “Look on us.” The cripple, supposing from their manner that they were about to give something to him, accordingly yielded them his interested attention. Peter then said to him, “Silver and gold have I none, but I give thee what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, rise up and walk.” As he said this, he took hold of the lame man and raised him; and he at once was able to support himself erect. Leaping up in the consciousness of strength, he stood and walked with them into the temple, expressing thankfulness and joy as he went, both by motions and words. The attention of the worshiping assembly in the great courts of the temple was at once directed to this strange circumstance; for all who had passed in at the gate, recognized this vivacious companion of the two apostles, as the man who had all his life been a cripple, without the power of voluntary locomotion, and they were utterly amazed at his present altered condition and actions. As the recovered cripple, leaning on Peter and John, still half doubting his new strength, accompanied them on to the porch of Solomon, the whole multitude ran after them thither, still in the greatest astonishment. All eyes were at once turned to the two wonderful men who had caused this miraculous change, and the astonishment which this deed had inspired must have been mingled with awe and reverence. Here surely was an occasion to test the honesty and sincerity of these followers of Christ, when they saw the whole people thus unhesitatingly giving to them the divine honor of this miraculous cure. What an opportunity for a calculating ambition to secure power, favor, and renown! Yet, with all these golden chances placed temptingly within their reach, they, so lately longing for the honors of an earthly dominion, but now changed by the inworkings of a purer spirit and a holier zeal, turned calmly and firmly to the people, utterly disclaiming the honor and glory of the deed, but rendering all the praise to their crucified Lord. Peter, ever ready with eloquent words, immediately addressed the awe-struck throngs who listened in silence to his inspired language, and distinctly declared the merit of this action to belong not to him and his companion, but to “that same Jesus, whom they, but a short time before, had rejected and put to death as an impostor.” He then went on to charge them boldly with the guilt of this murder, and summing up the evidences and consequences of their crime, he called on them to repent, and yield to this slain and risen Jesus the honors due to the Messiah. It was his name which, through faith in his name, had made this lame man strong, and restored him to all his bodily energies, in the presence of them all. That name, too, would be equally powerful to save them through faith, if they would turn to him, the prophet foretold by Moses, by Samuel, and all the prophets that followed them, as the restorer and leader of Israel, and through whom, as was promised to Abraham, all the families of the earth should be blest. But first of all to them, the favored children of Abraham, did God send his prophet-son, to bless them in turning away every one of them from their iniquities.

The beautiful gate.——The learned Lightfoot has brought much deep research to bear on this point, as to the position of this gate and the true meaning of its name; yet he is obliged to announce the dubious result in the expressive words, “In bivio hic stamus,” (“we here stand at a fork of the road.”) The main difficulty consists in the ambiguous character of the word translated “beautiful,” in Greek, Ὡραιαν, (horaian,) which may have the sense of “splendid,” “beautiful,” or, in better keeping with its root, Ὡρα, (hora,) “time,” it may be made to mean the “gate of time.” Now, what favors the latter derivation and translation, is the fact that there actually was, as appears from the Rabbinical writings, a gate called Hhuldah, (חולדה) probably derived from חלד (hheledh) “age,” “time,” “life,”——from the Arabic root خلد (khaladh) “endure,” “last,” so that it may mean “lasting or permanent.” There were two gates of this name distinguished by the terms greater and smaller, both opening into the court of the Gentiles from the great southern porch or colonnade, called the Royal colonnade. Through these, the common way from Jerusalem and from Zion led into the temple, and through these would be the natural entrance of the apostles into it. This great royal porch, also, where such vast numbers were passing, and which afforded a convenient shelter from the weather, would be a convenient place for a cripple to post himself in.

There was, however, another gate, to which the epithet “beautiful” might with eminent justice be applied. This is thus described by Josephus. (Jewish War. book V. chapter 5, section 3.) “Of the gates, nine were overlaid with gold and silver,——* * * but there was one on the outside of the temple, made of Corinthian brass, which far outshone the plated and gilded ones.” This is the gate to which the passage is commonly supposed to refer, and which I have mentioned as the true one in the text, without feeling at all decided on the subject, however; for I certainly do think the testimony favors the gate Huldah, and the primary sense of the word Ὡραια seems to be best consulted by such a construction.

The porch of Solomon.——Στοα Σολομωνος, (stoa Solomonos.) This was the name commonly applied to the great eastern colonnade of the temple, which ran along on the top of the vast terrace which made the gigantic rampart of Mount Moriah, rising from the depth of six hundred feet out of the valley of the Kedron. (See note on page [94].) The Greek word, στοα, (stoa,) commonly translated “porch,” does not necessarily imply an entrance to a building, as is generally true of our modern porches, but was a general name for a “colonnade,” which is a much better expression for its meaning, and would always convey a correct notion of it; for its primary and universal idea is that of a row of columns running along the side of a building, and leaving a broad open space between them and the wall, often so wide as to make room for a vast assemblage of people beneath the ceiling of the architrave. That this was the case in this STOA, appears from Josephus’ description given in my note on page [95], section 1. The stoa might be so placed as to be perfectly inaccessible from without, and thus lose all claim to the name of porch, with the idea of an entrance-way. This was exactly the situation and construction of Solomon’s stoa, which answers much better to our idea of a gallery, than of a porch. (See Donnegan, sub voc.)

It took the name of Solomon, from the fact that when the great temple of that magnificent king was burned and torn down by the Chaldeans, this eastern terrace, as originally constructed by him, was too vast, and too deeply based, to be easily made the subject of such a destroying visitation, and consequently was by necessity left a lasting monument of the strength and grandeur of the temple which had stood upon it. When the second temple was rebuilt, this vast terrace of course became again the great eastern foundation of the sacred pile, but received important additions to itself, being strengthened by higher and broader walls, and new accessions of mounded earth; while over its long trampled and profaned pavement, now beautified and renewed with splendid Mosaic, rose the mighty range of gigantic snow-white marble columns, which gave it the name and character of a STOA or colonnade, and filled the country for a vast distance with the glory of its pure brightness. (See note on page [95]. See also Lightfoot, Disquisit. Chor. cap. vi. § 2.) Josephus further describes it, explaining the very name which Luke uses. “And this was a colonnade of the outer temple, standing over the verge of a deep valley, on walls four hundred cubits in highth, built of hewn stones perfectly white,——the length of each stone being twenty cubits, and the highth six. It was the work of Solomon, who first built the whole temple.” (Josephus, Antiquities, XX. viii. 7.)

THE FIRST SEIZURE OF THE APOSTLES.

While the apostles were thus occupied in speaking words of wisdom to the attentive people, they were suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the guards of the temple, who, under the command of their captain, came up to the apostles, and seizing them in the midst of their discourse, dragged them away to prison, where they were shut up, for examination on the next day, before the civil and ecclesiastical court of the Jews. This act of violence was committed by order of the priests who had the care of the temple, more immediately instigated by the Sadducees, who were present with the priests and guards when the arrest was made. The reason why this sect, in general not active in persecuting Jesus and his followers, were now provoked to this act of unusual hostility, was, that the apostles were now preaching a doctrine directly opposed to the main principles of Sadducism. The assertion that Jesus had actually risen from the dead, so boldly made by the apostles, must, if the people believed it, entirely overthrow their confidence in the Sadducees, who absolutely denied the existence of a spirit, and the possibility of a resurrection of the dead. It was now evening, and the apostles being thus dragged away abruptly, in the midst of their discourse, the people were obliged to disperse for the night, without hearing all that the speakers had intended to say; yet even the fragment of discourse which they had heard, was not without a mighty effect. So convincing and moving were these few words of Peter, and so satisfactory was the evidence of the miracle, that almost the whole multitude of hearers and beholders seems to have come over in a mass to the faith of Christ; for converts to the astonishing number of five thousand are mentioned by the sacred historian, who all professed their belief in Jesus, as the resurrection and the life, and the healing.

The guards of the temple, &c.——This was the same set of men above described, as made up of the Levite porters and watchmen of the temple. See note on page [111]. Also Lightfoot Horae Hebraica in Acts iv. 1.——Rosenmueller, ibid. and Kuinoel. But Hammond has made the mistake of supposing this to be a detachment of the Roman garrison.