[259] The accuracy of the Acts in representing Puteoli as the seat of an early church has been amply illustrated by modern investigations. Judaism was flourishing there from the earliest times. In the year 4 B.C. a colony of wealthy Jews was established at Puteoli (Josephus, Wars, II. vii. 1). An inscription has been found there commemorating a Jewish merchant of Ascalon named Herod (Schürer's Jüdisch. Volk., I. 234).
[260] This point is elaborated by Mr. Cazenove in an article on the Theban Legion contained in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, iii. 642.
[261] This interesting inscription will be found in Mommsen, Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, vol. iv., No. 679. I described it in the Contemporary Review for January 1881, p. 97, in an article on Latin Christian Inscriptions. This inscription fully bears out Lord Lytton in the picture he gives of the introduction of Christianity into the neighbourhood of Vesuvius and Naples in his Last Days of Pompeii.
[262] Romans xvi. is a sufficient witness of the intimate knowledge of the Roman Church and its membership possessed by St. Paul. We may be sure that many mentioned in that catalogue written three or four years before found a place in the two deputations who went to meet St. Paul.
[263] See for proof of this Harnack's article in the Princeton Review, quoted above.
[264] The various biographies of the Apostle, and specially that of Conybeare & Howson, follow the Apostle's history in great detail during these two years; but the story of that period more properly falls under the consideration of the writers upon the Epistles of the Captivity than of one dealing with the Acts of the Apostles. If I were to discuss St. Paul's life at Rome I should have simply to borrow all my details from these Epistles. The abruptness of St. Luke's termination of his narrative is very noteworthy, and the best proof of the early date of the Acts. I do not think I need add anything to Dr. Salmon's argument on this point contained in the following words, which I take from chap. xviii. of his Introduction: "To my mind the simplest explanation why St. Luke has told us no more is, that he knew no more; and that he knew no more, because at the time nothing more had happened—in other words, that the book of the Acts was written a little more than two years after Paul's arrival in Rome."
Transcriber's note:
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.
Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the original text.
Page 165: Footnote 93 "... he jokingly said, 'It were better to be Herod's pigs ...'" The transcriber has added the word "It".