Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

Dorcas.——This is the Greek translation of the old Hebrew צבי (Tsebi,) in the Aramaic dialect of that age, changed into תביתא (Tabitha,) in English, “gazelle,” a beautiful animal of the antelope kind, often mentioned in descriptions of the deserts of south-western Asia, in which it roams; and not unfrequently the subject of poetical allusion. The species to which it is commonly supposed to belong, is the Antilopa Dorcas of Prof. Pallas, who named it on the supposition that it was identical with this animal, called by the Greeks, Δορκας, (Dorkas,) from Δερκο, (Derko,) “to look,” from the peculiar brightness of “its soft black eye.”

THE CALL TO THE HEATHEN.

The apostles had now, with great zeal and efficiency, preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the worshipers of the true God, beginning at Jerusalem, and spreading the triumphs of his name to the bounds of the land of Israel. But in all their devotion to their Master’s work, they had never had a thought of breaking over the bounds of the faith of their fathers, or of making their doctrine anything else than a mere completion or accompaniment to the law of Moses; nor did they imagine that they were ever to extend the blessings of the gospel to any who did not bow down to all the tedious rituals of the ancient covenant. The true power of their Lord’s parting command, “Go and teach all nations,” they had never felt; and even now, their great chief supposed that the change of heart and remission of sins, which he was commissioned to preach, were for none but the devout adherents of the Jewish faith. A new and signal call was needed, to bring the apostles to a full sense of their enlarged duties; and it is among the highest honors vouchsafed to Peter, that he was the person chosen to receive this new view of the boundless field now opened for the battles and triumphs of the cross. To him, as the head and representative of the whole band of the apostles, was now spread out, in all its moral vastness and its physical immensity, the coming dominion of that faith, whose little seed he was now cherishing, with but a humble hope; but whose stately trunk and giant branches were, from that small and low beginning, to stretch, in a mighty growth, over lands, and worlds, to him unknown. Thus far he had labored with a high and holy zeal, in a cause whose vastness he had never appreciated,——every moment building up, unwittingly, a name for himself, which should outlast all the glories of the ancient covenant; and securing for his Master a dominion which the religion of Moses could never have reached. He had never had an idea, that he with his companions was founding and spreading a new religion;——to purify the religion of the law and the prophets, and to rescue it from the confusion and pollutions of warring sectaries, was all that they had thought of; yet with this end in view, they had been securing the attainment of one so far above and beyond, that a full and sudden view of the consequences of their humble deeds, would have appalled them. But though the mighty plan had never been whispered nor dreamed of, on earth,——though it was too immense for its simple agents to endure its full revelation at once,——its certain accomplishment had been ordained in heaven, and its endless details were to be fully learned only in its triumphant progress through uncounted ages. But, limited as was the view which the apostles then had of the high destiny of the cause to which they had devoted themselves, it was yet greatly extended from the low-born notions with which they had first followed the steps of their Master. They now no longer entertained the vagary of a worldly triumph and a worldly reward; they had left that on the mount where their Lord parted from them, and they were now prayerfully laboring for the establishment of a pure spiritual kingdom in the hearts of the righteous. To give them a just idea of the exalted freedom to which the gospel brought its sons, and to open their hearts to a Christian fellowship, as wide as the whole human family, God now gave the apostolic leader an unquestionable call to tell to the world the glad tidings of salvation, for all men, through a new and living way, by change of heart and remission of sins. The incidents which led to this revelation are thus detailed.

The peace and good order of Palestine were now secured by several legions, whose different divisions, larger or smaller according to circumstances, were quartered in all the strong or important places in the country, to repress disorders, and enforce the authority of the civil power, when necessary. Besides this ordinary peace-establishment of the province, there was a cohort which took its name from the circumstance that it had been levied in Italy,——a distinction, now so rare, in consequence of the introduction of foreign mercenaries into the imperial hosts, as to become the occasion of an honorable eminence, which was signified by the title here given, showing that this division of the Roman armies was made up of the sons of that soil which had so long sent forth the conquerors of the world. Of all the variety of service required of the different detachments of the army, in the province which it guarded, by far the most honorable was that of being stationed next the person of the governor of the province, to maintain the military dignity of his vice-imperial court, and defend his representative majesty. Caesarea, on the sea-shore, was now the seat of the Roman government of Palestine; and here, in attendance on the person of the governor, was this aforesaid Italian cohort, at the head of a company in which, was a centurion named Cornelius. Though nothing is given respecting his birth and family but this single name, a very slight knowledge of Roman history and antiquities enables the historian to decide, that he was descended from a noble race of patricians, which had produced several of the most illustrious families of the imperial city. Eminent by this high birth and military rank, he must have been favored with an education worthy of his family and station. It is therefore allowable to conclude, that he was an intelligent and well-informed gentleman, whom years of foreign service, in the armies of his country must have improved by the combined advantages of a traveler and a disciplined warrior. Of his moral and religious character such an account is given, as proves that his principles, probably implanted in early life, had been of such firmness as to withstand the numerous temptations of a soldier’s life, and to secure him in a course of most uncommon rectitude in his duties towards God and towards man. In the merciful exercise of his power over the people whose safety and quiet he came to maintain, and, moreover, in the generous use of his pecuniary advantages, he passed his blameless life; and the high motive of this noble conduct, is discovered in the steady, pure devotion, in which he employed many hours of daily retirement, and in which he caused his whole family publicly to join, on proper occasions. Thus is he briefly and strongly characterized by the sacred historian: “devout, and fearing God with all his house; giving much alms, and praying to God always.”

Noble race of patricians.——The gens Cornelia, or “Cornelian race,” was unequaled in Rome for the great number of noble families sprung from its stock. The Scipios, the Sullas, the Dolabellas, the Cinnas, the Lentuli, the Cethegi, the Cossi, and many other illustrious branches of this great race, are conspicuous in Roman history; and the Fasti Consulares, record more than sixty of the Cornelian race, who had borne the consular dignity previous to the apostolic era. This is always a family name, and Ainsworth very grossly errs in calling it “the praenomen of several Romans.” Every Roman name of the middle and later ages of the commonwealth, had at least three parts, which were the praenomen, marking the individual,——the nomen marking the gens, (“race,” “stock,”) and the cognomen, marking the family or division of that great stock. Thus in the name “Publius Cornelius Scipio,” the last word shows that the person belonged to the Scipio family, which by the second word is seen to be of the great Cornelian stock, while the first shows that this member of the family was distinguished from his relations, by the name of Publius. (See Adams’s Roman Antiquities, on Names.) Wherever this name, Cornelius, occurs, if the whole appellation of the man is given, this comes in the middle, as the nomen, marking the race; as is the case with every one of those quoted by Ainsworth, in his blundering account of the word. See also Sallust, (The Catilinarian Conspiracy, 47, 55,) in defense of this peculiar limitation of the word to the gens. Not a single instance can be brought of its application to any person not of this noble patrician race, or of its use as a mere individual appellation. I am therefore authorized in concluding that this Cornelius mentioned in the Acts was related to this line of high nobility. It might, perhaps, be conjectured, that he had borrowed this name from that noble race, from having once been in the service of some one of its families, as was common in the case of freedmen, after they had received their liberty; but this supposition is not allowable; for he is expressly particularized as belonging to an Italian division of the army, which fact excludes the idea of that foreign origin which would belong to a slave. The Jews having but one name for each man, seldom gave all of a Roman’s name, unless of a very eminent man, as Pontius Pilate, Sergius Paulus, and other official characters; but selecting any one of the three parts which might be most convenient, they made that the sole appellative, whether praenomen, nomen, or cognomen. As in Luke ii. 2: Acts xxiii. 24: xxv. 1: xxvii. 1: xxviii. 7, &c.

JERUSALEM,
from the Latin Convent.
Luke xxi. 24.

The Italian cohort.——The word Σπειρα (Speira) I translate “cohort,” rather than “legion,” as the older commentators did. Jerome translates it “cohortem,” and he must have known the exact technical force of the Greek word, and to what Latin military term it corresponded, from his living in the time when these terms must have been in frequent use. Those who prefer to translate it “legion,” are misled by the circumstance, that Tacitus and other writers on Roman affairs, mention a legion which had the distinctive appellation of “the Italian Legion;” while it has been supposed that these ancient authors make no mention of an Italian cohort. But the deeply learned Wetstein, with his usual vast classical research, has shown several such passages, in Arrian and others, in which mention is made of an Italian cohort; and in Gruter’s inscriptions, quoted by Kuinoel, there is an account of “a volunteer cohort of Italian soldiers in Syria;” and Palestine was at this time included with Syria, under the presidency of Petronius. This inscription, too, justifies my remark as to the high character of those who served in this corps. “Cohors militum Italicorum voluntaria” seems to imply a body of soldiers of a higher character than the ordinary mercenary mass of the army, being probably made up of volunteers from respectable families of Italy, who chose to enlarge their knowledge of the world by foreign military service, in this very honorable station of life-guard to the Roman governor, as Doddridge and others suppose this to have been. (See Doddridge on this passage; also C. G. Schwartz in Wolff, Cur. Philology in loc.) It is considered also as fairly proved that the “Italian legion” was not formed till a much later period; so that it is rendered in the highest degree probable and unquestionable, that this was a cohort, and, as Schwartz and Doddridge prove, not a mere ordinary cohort, making the tenth part of a common legion of 4200, but a distinct and independent corps, attached to no legion, and devoted to the exclusive honorable service above mentioned. (See Bloomfield, Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, &c.)

Devout.——Some have tried hard to make out that Cornelius was what they call “a proselyte of the gate;” that is, one who, though not circumcised, nor conforming to the rituals generally, yet was an observer of the moral law. But Lardner very fully shows that there were not two sorts of proselytes; all who bore that name fully conforming to the Jewish rituals, but still called “strangers,” &c.; because, though admitted to all the religious privileges of the covenant, they were excluded from the civil and political privileges of Jews, and could not be freeholders. Cornelius must then have been a mere Gentile. (See Lardner in his life of Peter; also Kuinoel and Bloomfield.)

Caesarea.——This is another of those cities enlarged or rebuilt by the princes of the Herodian line, and honored with the names of the imperial family. This city stood on the sea-shore, about 30 miles north of Joppa; and (Modern Traveler) 62 north-north-west from Jerusalem. (600 stadia Josephus.) It has been idly conjectured by the Rabbinical writers, that this was the same with Ekron, of the Old Testament, Zephaniah ii. 4; while the Arabic version gives it as Hazor, Joshua xi. 1,——both with about equal probability. The earliest name by which it can be certainly recognized, is Apollonia, which it bore when it passed from the Syro-Grecians to the Maccabean princes. Its common name, in the time of Herod the Great, was πυργος Στρατωνος, turris Stratonis, “Straton’s castle,” from the name of a Greek pirate who had built a strong hold here. Herod the Great made it the most splendid city in his dominions, and even in all the eastern part of the Roman empire; and in honor of Augustus Caesar, called it Caesarea Augusta. It was sometimes called Caesarea Palestinae, to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi; for Palestine was then a name limited to the southern part of the coast of the Holy Land, and was bounded on the north by Phoenicia. This city was the capital of the whole Holy Land throughout the period of the later Herodian and Roman sway.