1 We need not discuss the chronology of this class.
2 It is scarcely necessary to speak of the well-known case
of Lzates, King of Adiabene, related by Josephus. The Jewish
merchant Ananias, who teaches him to worship God according
to the religion of the Jews, is willing, evidently from the
special emergency of the case and the danger of forcing
Izates fully to embrace Judaism in the face of his people,
to let him remain a mere Jahveh worshipper, only partially
conforming to the Law, and remaining uncircumcised'; but
another Jew from Galilee, Eleazer, versed in Jewish
learning, points out to him that, in neglecting
circumcision, he breaks the principal point of the Law.
Izates then has himself circumcised. Josephus, Antiq. xx.
2, § 3 f.
3 Acts x. 2 ff, xi. 2 ft. Dr. Lightfoot says: "The Apostles
of the circumcision, even St. Peter himself, had failed
hitherto to comprehend the wide purpose of God. With their
fellow-countrymen they still held it unlawful for a Jew to
keep company with an alien' (Acts x. 28)." Galatians, p.
290.
This will be more fully shown as we proceed. The conversion of the Gentiles was not, therefore, in the least degree an idea foreign to Judaism, but, on the contrary, formed an intimate part of the Messianic expectation of the later prophets. The conditions of admission to the privileges and promises of the Covenant, however, were full acceptance of the Mosaic law, and submission to the initiatory rite.(1) That small and comparatively insignificant people, with an arrogance that would have been ridiculous if, in the influence which they have actually exerted over the world, it had not been almost sublime, not only supposed themselves the sole and privileged recipients of the oracles of God, as his chosen and peculiar people, but they contemplated nothing short of universal submission to the Mosaic code, and the supremacy of Israel over all the earth.
We are now better able to estimate the position of the Twelve when the death of their Master threw them on their own resources, and left them to propagate his Gospel as they themselves understood it. Born a Jew of the race of David, accepting during his life the character of the promised Messiah, and dying with the mocking title "King of the Jews" written upon his cross, Jesus had left his disciples in close communion with the Mosaism which he had spiritualized and ennobled, but had not abolished. He himself had taught them that "it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness," and, from his youth upwards, had set them the example of
enlightened observance of the Mosaic law. His precept had not belied his example, and whilst in strong terms we find him inculcating the permanence of the Law, it is certain that he left no order to disregard it. He confined his own preaching to the Jews; the first ministers of the Messiah represented the twelve tribes of the people of Israel;.and the first Christians were of that nation, with no distinctive worship, but practising as before the whole Mosaic ritual. What Neander savs of "many," may, we think, be referred to all: "That Jesus faithfully observed the form of the Jewish law served to them as evidence that this form should ever preserve its value."(1) As a fact, the Apostles and the early Christians continued as before assiduously to practise all the observances of the Mosaic law, to frequent the Temple(2) and adhere to the usual strict forms of Judaism.(3) In addition to the influence of the example of Jesus and the powerful effect of national habit, there were many strong reasons which obviously must to Jews have rendered abandonment of the law as difficult as submission to its full requirements must have been to Gentiles. Holding as they did the Divine origin of the Old Testament, in which the observance of the Law was inculcated on almost every page,
it would have been impossible, without counter-teaching of the most peremptory and convincing character, to have shaken its supremacy; but beyond this, in that theocratic community Mosaism was not only the condition of the Covenant, and the key of the Temple, but it was also the diploma of citizenship, and the bond of social and political life. To abandon the observance of the Law was not only to resign the privilege and the distinctive characteristic of Israel, to relinquish the faith of the Patriarchs who were the glory of the nation, and to forsake a divinely appointed form of worship, without any recognized or even indicated substitute, but it severed the only link between the individual and the people of Israel, and left him in despised isolation, an outcast from the community. They had no idea, however, that any such sacrifice was required of them. They were simply Jews believing in the Jewish Messiah, and they held that all things else were to proceed as before, until the glorious second coining of the Christ.(1)
The Apostles and primitive Christians continued to hold the national belief that the way to Christianity lay through Judaism, and that the observance of the law was obligatory and circumcision necessary to complete communion.(2) Paul describes with unappeased
