Sanhedrin, which, according to the Mischna,(1) still represented the Mosaic council. This view receives confirmation from the Clementine Recognitions in the following passage: "He therefore chose us twelve who first believed in him, whom he named Apostles; afterwards seventy-two other disciples of most approved goodness, that even in this way recognising the similitude of Moses the multitude might believe that this is the prophet to come whom Moses foretold."(2) The passage here referred to is twice quoted in the Acts: "Moses indeed said: A prophet will the Lord our God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me," &c.(3) On examination, we do not find that there is any ground for the assertion that the seventy disciples were sent to the Samaritans or Gentiles, or were in any way connected with universalistic ideas. Jesus had "stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem," and sent messengers before him who "went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him," but they repulsed him, "because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem."(4) There is a decided break, however, before the appointment of the seventy. "After these things [———] the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was about to come."(5) There is not a single word in the instructions
given to them which justifies the conclusion that they were sent to Samaria, and only the inference from the number seventy, taken as typical of the nations, suggests it. That inference is not sufficiently attested, and the slightness of the use made of the seventy disciples in the third Gospel—this occasion being the only one on which they are mentioned, and no specific intimation of any mission to all people being here given—does not favour the theory of Pauline tendency. So far as we are concerned, however, the point is unimportant. Those who assert the universalistic character of the episode generally deny its authenticity; most of those who accept it as historical deny its universalism.
The order to go and teach all nations, however, by no means carries us beyond strictly Messianic limits. Whilst the Jews expected the Messiah to restore the people of Israel to their own Holy Land and crown them with unexampled prosperity and peace, revenging their past sorrows upon their enemies, and granting them supremacy over all the earth, they likewise held that one of the Messianic glories was to be the conversion of the Gentiles to the worship of Jahveh. This is the burden of the prophets, and it requires no proof. The Jews, as the people with whom God had entered into Covenant, were first to be received into the kingdom. "Let the children first be filled,"(1) and then the heathen might partake of the bread. Regarding the ultimate conversion of the Gentiles, therefore, there was no doubt; the only questions were as to the time and the conditions of admission into the national fellowship. As to the time, there never had been any expectation that the heathen could be turned to Jahveh in numbers before the appearance of the
Messiah, but converts to Judaism had been made in all ages, and after the dispersion, especially, the influence of the Jews upon the professors of the effete and expiring religions of Rome, of Greece, and of Egypt was very great, and numerous proselytes adopted the faith of Israel,(1) and were eagerly sought for(2) in spite of the abusive terms in which the Talmudists spoke of them.(3) The conditions on the other hand were perfectly definite. The case of converts had been early foreseen and provided for in the Mosaic code. Without referring to minor points, we may at once say that circumcision was indispensable to admission into the number of the children of Israel.(4) Participation in the privileges of the Covenant could only be secured by accepting the mark of that Covenant. Very many, however, had adopted Judaism to a great extent, who were not willing to undergo the rite requisite to full admission into the nation, and a certain modification had gradually been introduced by which, without it, strangers might be admitted into partial communion with Israel. There were, therefore, two classes of proselytes,(5) the first called Proselytes of the Covenant or of Righteousness, who were circumcised, obeyed the whole Mosaic law, and
were fully incorporated with Israel, and the other called Proselytes of the Gate,(1) or worshippers of Jahveh, who in the New Testament are commonly called [———].
These had not undergone the rite of circumcision, and therefore were not participators in the Covenant, but merely worshipped the God of Israel,(4) and were only compelled to observe the seven Noachian prescriptions. These Proselytes of the Gate, however, were little more than on sufferance. They were excluded from the Temple, and even the Acts of the Apostles represent it to be pollution for a Jew to have intercourse with them: it requires direct Divine intervention to induce Peter to go to Cornelius, and to excuse his doing so in the eyes of the primitive Church.(3) Nothing short of circumcision and full observance of the Mosaic law could secure the privileges of the Covenant with Israel to a stranger, and in illustration of this we may again point to the Acts, where certain who came from Judaea, members of the primitive church, teach the Christians of Antioch: "Except ye have been circumcised after the custom of Moses ye cannot be saved."(4)