[159] Thessalonica is to this day the abode of a large Jewish population. Tozer, in his Highlands of Turkey, vol. i., p. 146, says: "Of the sixty thousand inhabitants of Salonica two-thirds are Jews, the rest being Turks and Greeks.... From early times the Hebrew race seem to have been attracted by the commercial advantages of Salonica. Thus when St. Paul preached there he found a considerable Jewish community.... A large number of the Salonica Jews are rich merchants, and a great part of the wealth of the place is in their hands." Mr. Lewin, in his St. Paul, vol. i., p. 222, gives a table of the distances all along St. Paul's route.
[160] Mr. Findlay, in a little work lately published, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle, has many valuable observations on the subject of the Jewish opposition experienced by the Apostle at Thessalonica.
[161] This case of Thessalonica is an interesting illustration of Bishop Lightfoot's statement:—"The government of the Roman provinces at this time was peculiarly dangerous ground for the romance-writer to venture upon" (Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 291). If the Roman provinces were a dangerous ground for a romance-writer, such as some critics would make the author of the Acts, the government of the large Græco-Roman towns and cities was still more dangerous, as scarcely any two successive ones were alike. Thessalonica is a good instance of this. St. Luke calls the magistrates politarchs, and the triumphal arch at Thessalonica calls them politarchs; a title which seems to have been a very rare one, as only one other instance of its occurrence has been discovered. Monastir, in the north-west of Macedonia, is an important town, and there an inscription belonging to the ancient Deuriopus, twelve miles distant, was found more than twenty years ago containing the same title, politarchs. Surely the stones out of the walls of Thessalonica and of Monastir cry out in defence of St. Luke's accuracy! See Mr. Tozer's Highlands of Turkey, vol. i., p. 145, and vol. ii., p. 358, Append. B; Bœckh's Corp. Ins. Græc., No. 1967; articles by the Abbé Belley in the Acad. des Inscript., xxxviii., p. 125, and by Mr. Vaux in the Trans. of Roy. Soc. of Literature, vol. viii., new series.
[162] It is well, perhaps, to bear in mind the distances which separate the various stages of St. Paul's progress through Macedonia. Thessalonica was about a hundred miles from Philippi, Berœa fifty from Thessalonica, and the sea-coast of the Thermaic Gulf, or the Gulf of Salonica, as it is now called, some twenty miles from Berœa.
[163] The best description which I know of this neighbourhood is that given by Mr. Tozer in his Highlands of Turkey, vol. ii., p. 8. St. Paul embarked at the head of the long, narrow gulf, called anciently the Thermaic Gulf, leading up to the city of Thessalonica. The Apostle must have sailed in a mere fishing smack or good-sized boat, as the iron-bound western coast of this gulf is devoid of harbours sufficient for large ships. Mr. Tozer himself sailed from Thessalonica in such a vessel, see l.c., vol. ii., p. 4: "We chartered a vessel to convey us down the bay, a six-oared Smyrna caïque, quite elegant in her appointments as compared with the ordinary lumbering market boats and coasters of these seas, and a tight little craft withal, for though not more than six feet in width, and without a deck, she had made a voyage to the Crimea during the war." Cicero, even when going as proconsul into Asia travelled in the "undecked vessel of the Rhodians," of whose weakness and slowness he complains: see his letters to Atticus, v. 12 and 13.
[164] This important work may be most easily consulted in Shilleto's translation, published in Bohn's Classical Library, Bell & Sons, London, 1886.
[165] The Emperor Hadrian, for instance, adorned Athens with expensive buildings and libraries, and enriched it with endowments. See Duhr's work, p. 44, on the Journeys of the Emperor Hadrian, published in the Proceedings of the Archæological Society of Vienna; and cf. Pausanias, i. 18.
[166] Any one wishing to consult the writings of this contemporary of St. Paul can find Philo's works translated into English in 4 vols. in Bohn's Library of Ecclesiastical Antiquity. A comparison of St. Paul's writings with those of Philo will show us the wondrous superiority of those of the Christian Apostle, owing to his inspiration by the Holy Ghost. St. Paul's writings are a perpetual feast of fat things nourishing the soul unto everlasting life. The writings of Philo are curious and interesting, but no one would dream of taking them as a spiritual guide of life.
[167] The Athenians had for a long time previous to St. Paul's visit some commercial relations with the Jewish nation. Josephus, Antiqq., XIV. 8, tells us how they erected a brass statue of the high priest Hyrcanus, as an expression of their good will to the Jewish nation. This was a hundred years before St. Paul's visit. Bayet discovered early Jewish inscriptions among the Athenian cemeteries. See his De Titulis Atticæ Christianis, pp. 122-24, of which we treat in a note infra.
[168] Pausanias, i. 15, gives a description of the Porch or Painted Chamber, the Stoa Pœcile, whence the Stoics derived their name, showing that it was close to the Agora, or market-place, where Paul disputed.