Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

This logically clear statement of whole difficulty, supported by the decisive authority of the chief of the apostles, most effectually hushed all discussion at once; and the whole assembly kept silence, while Paul and Barnabas recounted the extent and success of their labors. After they had finished, James, as the leader of the Mosaic faction, arose and expressed his own perfect acquiescence in the decision of Simon Peter, and proposed an arrangement for a dispensation in favor of the Gentile converts, perfectly satisfactory to all. This conclusion, establishing the correctness of the tolerant and accommodating views of the chief apostle, ended the business in a prudent manner, the details of which will be given in the lives of those more immediately concerned in the results; and though so abrupt a conclusion may be undesirable here, it will be only robbing Peter to pay Paul.

ANTIOCH, IN SYRIA. Acts xi. 26.

PETER’S VISIT TO ANTIOCH.

The historian of the Acts of the Apostles, after the narration of the preceding occurrence, makes no farther allusion to Peter; devoting himself wholly to the account of the far more extensive labors of Paul and his companions, so that for the remaining records of Peter’s life, reference must be had to other sources. These sources, however, are but few, and the results of investigations into them must be very brief.

From some passages in the first part of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, in which he gives an account of his previous intercourse with the twelve apostles, having mentioned his own visit to Jerusalem and its results, as just described above, he speaks of Peter as coming down to Antioch, soon after, where his conduct, in some particulars, was such as to meet the very decided reprehension of Paul. On his first arrival in that Gentile city, Peter, in accordance with the liberal views taught him by the revelation at Joppa and Caesarea, mingled, without scruple, among all classes of believers in Christ, claiming their hospitalities and all the pleasures of social intercourse, making no distinction between those of Jewish and of heathen origin. But in a short time, a company of persons came down from Jerusalem, sent particularly by James, no doubt with a reference to some especial observations on the behavior of the chief apostle, to see how it accorded with the Jerusalem standard of demeanor towards those, whom, by the Mosaic law, he must consider improper persons for the familiar intercourse of a Jew. Peter, probably knowing that they were disposed to notice his conduct critically on these matters of ceremonial punctilio, prudently determined to quiet these censors by avoiding all occasion for any collision with their prejudices. Before their arrival, he had mingled freely with the Grecian and Syrian members of the Christian community, eating with them, and conforming to their customs as far as was convenient for unrestrained social intercourse. But he now withdrew himself from their society, and kept himself much more retired than when free from critical observation. The sharp-eyed Paul, on noticing this sudden change in Peter’s habits, immediately attacked him with his characteristic boldness, charging him with unworthy dissimulation, in thus accommodating his behavior to the whims of these sticklers for Judaical strictness of manners. The common supposition has been, that Peter was here wholly in the wrong, and Paul wholly in the right: a conclusion by no means justified by what is known of the facts, and of the characters of the persons concerned. Peter was a much older man than Paul, and much more disposed by his cooler blood, to prudent and careful measures. His long personal intercourse with Jesus himself, also gave him a great advantage over Paul, in judging of what would be the conduct in such a case most conformable to the spirit of his divine Master; nor was his behavior marked by anything discordant with real honesty. The precept of Christ was, “Be wise as serpents;” and a mere desire to avoid offending an over-scrupulous brother in a trifling matter, implied no more wariness than that divine maxim inculcated, and was, moreover, in the spirit of what Paul himself enjoined in very similar cases, in advising to avoid “offending a brother by eating meat which had been offered in sacrifice to idols.” There is no scriptural authority to favor the opinion that Peter ever acknowledged he was wrong; for all that Paul says is——“I rebuked him,”——but he does not say what effect it had on one who was an older and wiser man than his reprover, and quite as likely to be guided by the spirit of truth. It is probable, however, that Peter had something to say for himself; since it is quite discordant with all common ideas, to suppose that a great apostle would, in the face of those who looked up to him as a source of eternal truth, act a part which implied an unjustifiable practical falsehood. After all, the difference seems to have been on a point of very trifling importance, connected merely with the ceremonials of familiar intercourse, between individuals of nations widely different in manners, habits, prejudices, and the whole tenor of their feelings, as far as country, language and education, would affect them; and a fair consideration of the whole difficulty, by modern ethical standards, will do much to justify Peter in a course designed to avoid unnecessary occasions of quarrel, until the slow operations of time should have worn away all these national prejudices,——the rigid sticklers quietly accommodating themselves to the neglect of ceremonies, which experience would prove perfectly impracticable among those professing the free faith of Christ.

HIS RESIDENCE IN BABYLON.

The first epistle of Peter contains at the close a general salutation from the church in Babylon, to the Christians of Asia Minor, to whom it was addressed. From this, the unquestioned inference is, that Peter was in that city when he wrote. The only point mooted is, whether the place meant by this name was Babylon on the Euphrates, or some other city commonly designated by that name. The most irrational conjecture on the subject, and yet the one which has found most supporters, is, that this name is there used in a spiritual or metaphorical sense for Rome, whose conquests, wide dominion, idolatries, and tyranny over the worshipers of the true God, were considered as assimilating it to the ancient capital of the eastern world. But, in reference to such an unparalleled instance of useless allegory, in a sober message from one church to a number of others, serving as a convenient date for a letter, it should be remembered that at that time there were at least two distinct, important places, bearing the name of Babylon,——so well known throughout the east, that the simple mention of the name would at once suggest to a common reader, one of these as the place seriously meant. One of these was that which stood on the site of the ancient Chaldean Babylon, a place of great resort to the Jews, finally becoming to them, after the destruction of Jerusalem, a great city of refuge, and one of the two great capitals of the Hebrew faith, sharing only with Tiberias the honors of its literary and religious pre-eminence. Even before that, however, as early as the time of Peter, it was a city of great importance and interest in a religious point of view, offering a most ample and desirable field for the labors of the chief apostle, now advancing in years, and whose whole genius, feelings, religious education and national peculiarities, qualified him as eminently for this oriental scene of labor, as those of Paul fitted him for the triumphant advancement of the Christian faith among the polished and energetic races of the mighty west. Here, then, it seems reasonable and pleasant to imagine, that in this glorious “clime of the east,”——away from the bloody strife between tyranny and faction, that distracted and desolated the once blessed land of Israel’s heritage, during the brief delay of its awful doom,——among the scenes of that ancient captivity, in which the mourning sons of Zion had drawn high consolation and lasting support from the same word of prophecy, which the march of time in its solemn fulfilments had since made the faithful history of God’s believing people,——here the chief apostle calmly passed the slow decline of his lengthened years. High associations of historical and religious interest gave all around him a holy character. He sat amid the ruins of empires, the scattered wrecks of ages,——still in their dreary desolation attesting the surety of the word of God. From the lonely waste, mounded with the dust of twenty-three centuries, came the solemn witness of the truth of the Hebrew seers, who sung, over the highest glories of that plain in its brightest days, the long-foredoomed ruin that at last overswept it with such blighting desolation. Here, mighty visions of the destiny of worlds, the rise and fall of empire, rose on the view of Daniel and Ezekiel, whose prophetic scope, on this vast stage of dominion, expanded far beyond the narrow limits that bounded all the future in the eyes of the sublimest of those prophets, whose whole ideas of what was great were taken from the little world of Palestine. Like them, too, the apostolic chief lifted his aged eyes above the paltry commotions and troubles of his own land and times, and glanced far over all, to the scenes of distant ages,——to the broad view of the spiritual consummation of events,——to the final triumphs of a true and pure faith,——to the achievement of the world’s destiny.

Babylon.——The great Sir John David Michaelis enters with the most satisfactory fullness into the discussion of this locality;——with more fullness, indeed, than my crowded limits will allow me to do justice to; so that I must refer my reader to his Introduction to the New Testament, (chapter xxvii. § 4, 5,) where ample statements may be found by those who wish to satisfy themselves of the justice of my conclusion about the place from which this epistle was written. He very ably exposes the extraordinary absurdity of the opinion that this date was given in a mystical sense, at a time when the ancient Babylon, on the Euphrates, was still in existence, as well as a city on the Tigris, Seleucia, to which the name of modern Babylon was given. And he might have added, that there was still another of this name in Egypt, not far from the great Memphis, which has, by Pearson and others, been earnestly defended as the Babylon from which Peter wrote. Michaelis observes, that through some mistake it has been supposed, that the ancient Babylon, in the time of Peter, was no longer in being; and it is true that in comparison with its original splendor, it might be called, even in the first century, a desolated city; yet it was not wholly a heap of ruins, nor destitute of inhabitants. This appears from the account which Strabo, who lived in the time of Tiberius, has given of it. This great geographer compares Babylon to Seleucia, saying, “At present Babylon is not so great as Seleucia,” which was then the capital of the Parthian empire, and, according to Pliny, contained six hundred thousand inhabitants. The acute Michaelis humorously remarks, that “to conclude that Babylon, whence Peter dates his epistle, could not have been the ancient Babylon, because this city was in a state of decay, and thence to argue that Peter used the word mystically, to denote Rome, is about the same as if, on the receipt of a letter dated from Ghent or Antwerp, in which mention was made of a Christian community there, I concluded that because these cities are no longer what they were in the sixteenth century, the writer of the epistle meant a spiritual Ghent or Antwerp, and that the epistle was really written from Amsterdam.” And in the next section he gives a similar illustration of this amusing absurdity, equally apt and happy, drawn in the same manner from modern places about him, (for Goettingen was the residence of the immortal professor.) “The plain language of epistolary writing does not admit of figures of poetry; and though it would be very allowable in a poem, written in honor of Goettingen, to style it another Athens, yet if a professor of this university should, in a letter written from Goettingen, date it Athens, it would be a greater piece of pedantry than any learned man was ever yet guilty of. In like manner, though a figurative use of the word Babylon is not unsuitable to the animated and poetical language of the Apocalypse, yet in a plain and unadorned epistle, Peter would hardly have called the place whence he wrote, by any other appellation than that which literally and properly belonged to it.” (Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, Marsh’s translation, chapter xxvii. § 4, 5.)

The most zealous defender of this mere popish notion of a mystical Babylon, is, alas! a Protestant. The best argument ever made out in its defense, is that by Lardner, who in his account of Peter’s epistles, (History of the Apostles and Evangelists, chapter xix. § 3,) does his utmost to maintain the mystical sense, and may be well referred to as giving the best possible defense of this view. But the course of Lardner’s great work having led him, on all occasions, to make the most of the testimonies of the fathers, in connection with the establishment of the credibility of the gospel history, he seems to have been unable to shake off this reverence of every thing which came on authority as old as Augustin; and his critical judgment on the traditionary history of Christianity is therefore worth very little. Any one who wishes to see all his truly elaborate and learned arguments fairly met, may find this done by a mind of far greater originality, critical acuteness and biblical knowledge, (if not equal in acquaintance with the fathers,) and by a far sounder judgment, in Michaelis, as above quoted, who has put an end to all dispute on these points, by his presentation of the truth. So well settled is this ground now, that we find in the theology of Romish writers most satisfactory refutations of an error, so convenient for the support of Romish supremacy. The learned Hug (pronounced very nearly like “Hookh;” U sounded as in bull, and G strongly aspirated) may here be referred to for the latest defense of the common sense view. (Introduction vol. II. § 165.) In answer to the notion of an Egyptian Babylon, he gives us help not to be found in Michaelis, who makes no mention of this view. Lardner also quotes from Strabo what sufficiently shows, that this Babylon was no town of importance, but a mere military station for one of the three Roman legions which guarded Egypt.