Final Sphere of Labour
Peter’s outward appearance. His vast sphere as the Apostle of the Circumcision. Associated with John. Asia Minor. Babylonia. Extent of the Dispersion. Scene of Peter’s final labours. Evidences of his success. 44 The Church that is at Babylon.”
“The clarion calk; away! to take
Thy station in God’g hosts.
And with His mitred watchmen wake;
And in meek silence, for His sake,
Endure what scornful music earth can make
When holy ground seems lost.”
—Keblfs Miscellaneous Poems.
“Hitherto in drawing up the life of this great Apostle, we have had an infallible guide to conduct and lead us; but the sacred Story breaking off here, forces us to look abroad, and to pick up what memoirs the ancients have left us in this matter.” — Dr Cave, p. 136.
“It is remarkable that Galilee is the scene of none of those transactions which are related in the Acts. The blue waters of Tiberias, with their fishing-boats, and towns on the brink of the shore, are consecrated to the Gospels.... When we come to the travels of the Apostles, the scenery is no longer limited and Jewish, but Catholic and widely extended, like the gospel which they preached.” — Howson and Congbeareys St Paul.
% i There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed” (Joshua xiiLlK
HIS may not be an unbefitting place to
endeavour to give the reader, from a few
scattered notices which have come down
to us from the Apostolic era, an impression of the outward appearance of Peter, now that he was approaching
the confines of old age.
Nicephorus, to whose account of him we have already incidentally referred, probably speaks of his early life, when he describes him as “slender in person, inclining to tallness, and of pallid complexion.” St Jerome, on the other hand, quoting from the “Periodoi “of Clemens, apparently refers to a more advanced period — when the head, once covered with a black and crisp hair,” had become bald. Baronius notes that with a dark Jewish eye, he had a redness in the eyelids, which, by a freak of imagination, he alleges to have arisen from the frequent tears the Apostle-penitent was known to shed, caused by the torturing memory of his fall and denial; while the broad nose and distended nostril were the indication of that strength and vigour of character which enabled him to rise superior to his weaknesses. We may farther be permitted to add to these brief notices, which I need not say have little more than a legendary value, the remarks of one to whose Art volume we have been indebted more than once in the preceding pages: — “The ancient Greek type of the head of St Peter is so strongly characterised as to have the air of a portrait ... He is a robust old man, with a broad forehead, and rather coarse features; an open undaunted countenance, short grey hair, and short thick beard, curled, and of a silvery white. ... In some early pictures, he is bald on the top of the head, and the hair grows thick around in a circle, somewhat like the priestly tonsure. ... It is a tradition that the Gentiles shaved the head of St Peter, in order to make him an object of derision, and that this is the origin of the tonsure.... On the early sarcophagi, and in the most ancient church mosaics, he bears a scroll or book. ... A little later, we find him with the cross in one hand and the Gospel in the other.” The same writer adds, what is worthy of note, that “the keys in his hand, appear as his peculiar attribute about the eighth century (not earlier). ... In general he carries two keys, one of gold and one of silver, to absolve and to bind.”1 We enter from this date on a new and interesting portion of the Apostle’s life.
1 “Sacred and Legendary Art,” pp. 187, 188.
FINAL SPHERE OF LABOUR. 53T
It is true we have no longer inspired data for our guidance; but there are sufficient hints in his own Epistles and in those of Paul, along with corroborative statements of contemporary writers, coupled with the vaguer and less reliable source of ecclesiastical tradition, to enable us to form a tolerably coherent narrative.
He was probably alpout the age of sixty-one, in the full maturity of his powers, when called to make other, perhaps we may even be warranted to say, more wondrous use of the symbolic “keys.” On the occasion of the same meeting of the Council of Jerusalem, at which the decree was issued as to the parity of Jew and Gentile in respect of Christian privilege, another decision and arrangement was made of vast moment for the extension of Christ’s kingdom at that era, as well as for the Church of the future. Under the distinct guidance and direction of the Holy Ghost, a partition of work in the evangelisation of the human race was then and there resolved upon between the Apostolic leaders. To Paul was committed “the heathen “— the vast Gentile world, with Rome as its acknowledged centre. His Lord’s words at the hour of his conversion were to receive their amplest fulfilment:” Depart; for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles; “while Peter was commissioned to go to” the Circumcision. “His appropriated sphere was” the lost sheep of the house of
i There is a legend regarding Peter at this time, whose beauty redeems it from the puerility which characterises the majority of these. It is to the following effect: — That the Apostles, before finally separating, resolved to construct a creed for behoof of the Church universal, to be called, as it still is, “The Apostolic Creed;” and they agreed that each of them would contribute a sentence or article To Peter was intrusted the opening one. He gave the grand foundation truth so familiar to the bygone centuries of Christendom: “Ci edu in Deum Patron omnipotentcm, Ct€atorcni can et terra.”
Israel.” That phrase was not by any means restricted to his brethren in Palestine. Hitherto his work lay exclusively there. For twenty years he had remained in his native country as a faithful Evangelist; but from this time these labours were to take a wider sweep, and include all the bordering lands where thousands on thousands of Israelites were to be found — specially the towns and cities of Asia Minor and the countries watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. It is well for us to note this distinct transition-page in his history. In former years, from the time in which as a boy he mended his father’s nets on the shores of Gennesaret, we have followed his footsteps in Capernaum, Jerusalem, Samaria, Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea. In none of these from this date are his footsteps to be traced. He is a voluntary exile for ever from the favoured territory which he doubtless loved so well. In neither case, indeed, were these two illustrious men debarred from scattering the precious seed wherever it was likely to take root Hence we find Paul making his first missionary tours, and distributing the bread of life among the countries of Syria and Asia Minor, Cilicia, and Pamphylia, and the half-heathen tribes of Pisidia and Lycaonia, previous to his spreading the greater Gentile feast in Western Europe. He remained for a considerable time detained by illness in Galatia, and continued to have a very special interest in the church which he had founded there. We know the length and value of his labours at Ephesus in after years. Moreover, wherever he went, it was “to the Jew first. * This is specially mentioned in each entry of his journeyings in the Acts of the Apostles. At Berea, at Antioch of Pisidia, at Iconium, at Salamis, at Corinth, at Ephesus, he and his fellow-travellers invariably first opened their lips in the sanctuaries of their Hebrew countrymen. On the other hand, Peter, though thus the appointed Apostle of the Circumcision, we have seen was honoured to be the first to open the kingdom of heaven to the Gentiles, and to vindicate their freedom from the observances of the Mosaic law. In his Epistles he addresses Gentiles as well as Jews on the obligations of their common faith — those who were “once not a people, but are now the people of God 99 (iL 10); and who were formerly involved in the practice of” abominable idolatries “(iv. 3). We have strong reason also to conjecture that he was associated with Paul and Apollos for some time at Corinth. His name occurs several times in the First Epistle to the Corinthians as the head or reputed leader of one of the religious parties;” I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas; n — engaged, with the two former, in a common work among its mixed population of Jew and Greek. We are led also distinctly to infer such a temporary residence, from the epistle which Clement of Rome sent to the Corinthian Church; and his assertion is further confirmed by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, A.D. 180: “a man of excellent judgment, who was not likely to be misinformed nor to make such an assertion lightly, in an epistle addressed to the Bishop and Church of Rome.” 1 It is interesting thus to think of the Fisherman of Bethsaida coming in contact with another of the vast Pagan centres of mercantile and intellectual life in Europe, as he had already done in Asia; — the
i Bib. Die, Art. “Peter.* His words are: “Thus likewise you have mingled the flourishing seed that had been planted by Peter and Paul aft Rome and Corinth. For both of these having planted us at Corinth, likewise instructed us.”
city which at that day, in the words of Dean Milman, “was the emporium of the eastern and western divisions of the Roman Empire, the Venice of the old world, in whose streets the continued stream of commerce, either flowing from or towards the great capital of the world, out of all the eastern territories, met and crossed.” Peter would here be brought too jnto conflict with darker phases of life to which in Palestine he had been comparatively a stranger. For even in that polluted age, when the demoralising influence of Greek and Roman vice and luxury was universally felt, the citizens of Corinth obtained the reputation of a bad pre-eminence.
It will be remembered, at the same time, how Paul was suddenly arrested in his missionary labours in the populous Asiatic provinces of which we have spoken. He was “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia.” He “assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered him not;” while a voice, that could not be mistaken, came from the shores of Greece, reminding him that his appointed field was the Great West — not Asia but Europe. Obedient to the heavenly vision, he at once quitted Troas, and began his labours in Greece. It was a similar divine monition, doubtless, which farther dictated the resolve, “I must see Rome also;” and which in a subsequent year led him to the extremest bounds of the West by a journey into Spain. And why, may we ask, did the Divine Monitor thus interpose to divert his labours from Oriental lands 1 Other reasons in the all- wise providence of God there may have been; but we have no hesitation in saying, that that diversion was mainly intended emphatically to point to the allotted sphere of Peter’s ministry, as well as to indicate Paul’s own peculiar mission to Europe. The latter was to storm the great capitals of Pagan civilisation — Borne, Athens, Corinth, Philippi. Peter and John were to devote the main energies of their future lives to the “Diaspora” (the Dispersion) * in other words, to the Jewish brethren scattered among the cities and provinces of Syria, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Egypt. To quote again the language of the modern historian of the Jews in confirmation of this view: “In no part of the authentic Scripture, occurs the slightest allusion to the personal history of St Peter as connected with the Western Churches. At all events, the conversion of the Gentile world was the acknowledged province of St Paul. In that partition-treaty in which these two moral invaders divided the yet unconquered world, the more civilised province of Greek and Roman heathenism was assigned to him who was emphatically called the Apostle of the Gentiles; while the Jewish population fell under the particular care of the Galilean Peter.”
Independent altogether of the claims of the” Children of God scattered abroad,’’ one very sufficient obstacle prevented the Apostles of the Circumcision tarryiug longer in Palestine, and making Jerusalem their headquarters. A horde of bloodthirsty fanatics, instigated by the priesthood, had spread consternation through the entire country, although mustering in chief force under the shadow of the Jewish Temple. By the robbery and murder of the Christiau sect, they imagined, as one better known had done not long before, that they were
1 That word, erroneously rendered “scattered abroad” in oar authorised rersion, is onlj found once in the Gospels (John vii. Z5 when the Jews said among themselves of Jesus, “Whither will He go? Will He go unto the diaspora among the Greeks” (marg). doing God service. Not a few had already fallen victims’ to the daggers of these Sicarii as they were called. If the life even of the Jewish High Priest was taken by them while performing his most sacred duties at the altar of Jehovah, what security would there be for the safety of the Christian ringleaders t Accordingly, it was alike obeying the dictates of a wise prudence, as well as the express command of their Great Master to His servants, to evade the sword of persecution in one city and country by fleeing to another. James alone remained in Jerusalem to brave the storm. As the head of the Church there, he accepted the post of great and increasing danger, animated doubtless by a heroic sense of duty. The other two Apostles, hitherto so closely associated with him, took their journey north and east of Palestine. It is pleasant to think of Peter as again joined in sacred fellowship and labour with his earliest friend John. We have already traced them together as playmates on the beach at Gennesaret; together in the earliest developments of a new and higher life at the Jordan; together in the most momentous incidents of the Master’s ministry from which the others were excluded; together on the Mount of glory; together in the Garden of suffering; together in the awful interval of suspense; together at the Tomb; together at the two final meetings at Tiberias and Olivet; together at Peutecost and its subsequent miracles. And now, at another great crisis in their history which was to apportion and determine the work of future years, how appropriate that the two faithful brothers should blend yet once more their counsels and prayers, and share the perils and rewards of the new gigantic mission-enterprise.
In the first remarkable sermon at Pentecost which Peter preached, we may recall, that among the multitudes gathered at the Feast and who were numbered among his auditory, are specially mentioned “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia... Oappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygla, and PamphyHa.ff It is surely interesting to think that we have the strongest grounds (amounting indeed to certainty) for supposing that the Apostle’s final sphere of labour lay among these very peoples; that among the Paschal Pilgrims, to whom in A.D. 33 he addressed his stirring words, he spent from fifteen to seventeen of his latter years, journeying during the earlier and longer portion of that time from place to place along with his wife, who would seem to have accompanied him in his mission tours; that to these same “strangers of the Dispersion” in Asia Minor, as we shall come more particularly to observe, he wrote his two Epistles. And we may here so far anticipate by remarking, that it is impossible to read these two inspired letters without feeling that the writer must have been personally conversant with his correspondents. The mere fact of such communications, indeed, does not necessarily imply that he had enjoyed previous intercourse and fellowship with them; for more than one of Paul’s noblest Epistles (such as the Komans), were written to those with whom he had never come in contact. But in perusing Peter’s words, with their affectionate and tender messages of paternal counsel and consolation, it is obvious that he writes to those who had “seen his face in the flesh,” and in whom he felt a sacred personal interest and responsibility. His references in his First Epistle imply that he was well acquainted with their “manifold temptations” (i. 6); that he had a thorough appreciation of their fervent strivings in the midst of their “suffering for righteousness” (iii. 14), and a knowledge of the shameful excesses of the Gentile population among whom their lot was cast (iv. 3, 4). This personal connection is perhaps more apparent still in his Second Epistle — where, as we shall find, he speaks of intimate knowledge of their condition, stating that he writes the letter not as embodying new information or new truths, but to “stir them up by putting them in remembrance;” so that after he was gone, they might have his writings as a souvenir of oral instructions (L 12, 13; iii 1, 2).
He probably entered at first, on quitting the shores of Palestine, on St PauFs labours in Galatia; and when we read afterwards the impressive Epistles sent by the Exile of Patmos to the Seven Churches of Asia, may we not warrantably entertain the thought, that these communities of the Faithful had in many cases been planted, in all cases watered, by Peter 1 In the partition of labour to which we have alluded, John probably had assigned to himself the spiritual oversight of the cities and provinces occupying the west of Asia Minor, making Ephesus his principal place of residence. Peters dutiful son, Mark, had, if we may follow a very probable tradition, the charge given him of the Dispersion in Egypt, fixing his abode in populous Alexandria Jewish settlements had been established there by Alexander and Ptolemy I., and members of the Hebrew race were scattered all through North* Africa extending to distant Abyssinia inland,1 while still one other “companion in labour,” Jude (Thaddeus), seems
i Art. “Peter,” Bib. Die.
to have bad assigned to him the region of Mesopotamia, with Edessa for its capital.
While all these countries and districts appear to have enjoyed the Evangelistic labours of Peter, there is a brief statement made at the end of his First Epistle which seems to point to one particular place as forming, in latter years at all events, his headquarters, or if we may so call it, the seat of his Episcopate: “The Church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you” (1 Pet. v. 13). We are led to suppose that when exceeding the allotted threescore and ten — the infirmities of advancing age no longer permitting the untiring energies and activities of former years, he delegated the missionary work in the more distant provinces to his juniors, making Babylonia the principal sphere of his ministrations, and Babylon his principal dwelling-place.
It may be something new and startling to many readers the thought of the Apostle — whose name and labours we are in the habit of associating with Galilee, Judea, and Samaria — thus spending the ripest fifteen years of his life in countries, some of which we scarcely hear of in Sacred Story; and, above all, making the place of his final abode the old decaying capital of the Euphrates, whose latest connection with Scripture narrative is with the Jewish captives seated by its willowed streams and weaving their mournful elegy over Jerusalem and Zion. Indeed some may be apt incredulously to say, “Can it really be so t” What could induce Peter to fix his abode in these far-off lands, where we can hardly imagine the harvest he sought to have been plenteous 1 If Palestine itself, as
2m
THIS FOOTSTEPS OF ST PETER.
we have* seen, Had become a perilous mission field, would not, at all events, the districts contiguous to it be a more appropriate and fruitful sphere for the designated” Apostle of the Circumcision V
When we come, however, to examine the question in the light of contemporary history, our impressions are rectified, and we shall find that it is no snob strange or incredulous tale as may at first be supposed. If not to us, at all events to Peter’s contemporaries, the idea associated with the term “Dispersion “was not a limited but a vast one. So far from its being descriptive of a mere handful of Jews who had strayed beyond their native land, and settled down in groups in the thinly-peopled districts of Asia, the truth was, that the Hebrew population in the countries bordering on Palestine, including Egypt and the islands of the Mediterranean, was something enorm»us~t-in some cities and provinces even outnumbering the native races. “Jerusalem,” says Agrippa in a letter to the Emperor Caligula, “is indeed my country, but it is the metropolis not of one region but of many, — of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and the chief parts of Asia as far. as Bithynia and the most remote shores of the Euxine.” In Alexandria, as the capital city, and including the country south of it stretching to Ethiopian — of which we have just spoken — there were, according to Phiio, -about a million of Jews. “The persecutions of Antiochus Epipbaues,” says Canon Westcott,” only served to push forward the Jewish emigration to the remote districts of his empire. In Armenia the Jews arrived at the greatest dignities, and Nisibus became a new centre of colonisation. The Jews of Cappadocia (1 Pet. L 1) are
i See Norria* Kf j, p. 188.
Mutually mentioned in the Mishna, and a prince and princess Adiabeue adopted the Jewish faith only thirty years before the destruction of the Temple. Large settlements of Jews were established in Cyprus, in the islands of the ^gean, and on the western coast of Asia Minor (Ephesus, Miletus, Pergamos, Halicaraassus, Sardis). The Romans confirmed to them the privileges which they had obtained from the Syrian kings, and though they were exposed to sudden outbursts of popular violence, the Jews of the Syrian provinces gradually fprmed a close connection with their new homes, and, together with the Greek language, adopted in many respects Greek ideas; “1 .and although it scarcely concerns us in this place to trace the ramifications of this “dia? spora” further, we may only observe, that in Rome itself, the Transtiberine quarter, allocated by Pompey to the Jewish settlers, had enormously increased in the reign of Augustus: so much so, as to lead Horace in one of his Satires playfully to dread lest the population of the city be outnumbered by the alien race (Sat L 70). It has been noted that in no city of Greece or Asia Minor, Athens alone excepted, did Paul not find either a synagogue or proseucha.2
As to Babylonia, we know that at the return from the exile in the time of Ezra, very many Israelites who had it in their power to retrace their steps from the laud oi captivity, preferred remaining and settling in the country of their adoption. Much as they treasured the memories of their youth, and proud as they were of their nationality, yet that beautiful poetical figure of a contemporary Psalmist, to which we have already referred,
1 Bib. Die, Art. “Dispersion,” p. 441. “Sermons on the Apostolic Age,” p. 204. was true only of a portion, and that too the minority, whom he described as “hanging their harps on the willows of the Euphrates,” as they longed for the banks of the Kedron, the groves of Olivet, and the altars of Zion. Of the twenty-four courses of priests, only four followed their head into Palestine. To quote the language of a modern writer: “The rich, the learned, the high-born among them, declined to go back into the bleak mountain-wastes of Judah; and even the masons and dyers, the weavers and tinkers, whom Cyrus had sent away to rebuild Jerusalem, sighed over the country they were leaving as a Paradise on earth; a land of plenty, a land of great rivers and a bounteous soil, a land of pleasure, in which the seasons came and went with an indolent beauty unknown among their own barren ravines and rugged bluffs/11 “The successive deportations,” says Dr Kitto,” of the people of Judea by the Chaldeans, comprised the princes, the nobles, the priests, the warriors, the skilled artisans, leaving nothing but the unskilled labourers, ’ the poor of the land, to be husbandmen and vine-dressers.’ In the lands to which they were taken, they were not slaves or captives, but free colonists, — free to follow their several pursuits, and to
enrich themselves by their exertions. Of all
people that ever lived, the Jews were adapted to thrive under such circumstances. If they have thriven in modern times, in all the countries of their dispersion, in spite of the dislike and abhorrence with which they have been regarded by those among whom they dwelt, how much more must they have thriven among a people who had no strong hatred against them, and under a government which had a due sense of their value aa
1 “The Holy Land,** p. 48.
useful citizens and servants of the State, and which, therefore, sought rather to encourage than to depress them! No doubt, there were exceptions. We know historically of some. But that, upon the whole, the Jews did not eventually find themselves in an evil case, is shown by the fact of their general backwardness to return to their own land, when the decree of Cyrus left them free to do so; and by the acknowledged fact, that as it was the flower of the nation which had been taken into exile, so it was the flower of the nation which chose to remain in the land to which it had been exiled.” 1 The words of Josephus writing of the apostolic era are, “There were tens of thousands of the people that had been carried captive and dwelt about Babylonia.” Generally credited to indulge in exaggeration, the old Jewish historian would seem in the present case to have fallen beneath the reality — the estimated amount of Israelites in this large province being upwards of two millions. To other inducements for these numerous Jewish settlers may be added the famous seats of Hebrew learning, Neharda and Susa, which attracted many aspirants’ after .Rabbinical lore and intellectual culture.
Regarding Babylon itself, although its citizens bad recently suffered severe persecution under the reign of Caligula, yet (Jerusalem excepted) it contained within its gates the largest Hebrew population in the cities of that era. They continued there as they do at this hour in Frankfort and the Ghetto of Rome, a separate com-
Dr Kitto’s Daily Readings in loc. Other authorities to the same effect might be quoted. 14 Under the Parthian kings,” says Dean Milman, they lired io peace, unmolested in their religion, sometimes making proselytes of the highest rank — in the case of I sates, even of kings; and they were oppressed by do exclusive taxation. The Jews of Africa and Syria might hare looked with repining envy on their more prosperous brethren in Baby. Ionia.” — H istorg o/th: Jew, vol. ii. p. 422.
550 THE FOOTSTEPS OF 8T PETEfc.
munity, refusing to commingle with the Gentile inhabitants. Philo estimates their number at two hundred and fifty thousand; and as fortifying the correctness of his statement it may be added, that as every faithful Jew living in foreign lands contributed annually his half-shekel for the expenses of the Temple at Jerusalem, Joseph us speaks of the very escort which accompanied the yearly tribute from the capital, alone as consisting of several thousands. The former indeed of these historians (also a* contemporary of the Apostles) farther mentions, that such was the preponderance of Jews in the province, that when the Emperor Caligula demanded that one-half of his troops stationed in Babylonia should march to Palestine, in order to enforce his insulting decree as to having his statue placed in the Temple Petronius, the proconsul of Syria, used his influence to retain? them, fearing a successful rising of the Jewish inhabitants, — adding; that had they obeyed his mandate daring the war, so formidable were their numbers that they mi <zht have driven out the invaders.
As may be gathered from what we have described, the multitudes in this vast “diaspora,” notwithstanding the lapse of successive generations, never forgot in these lands of their adoption their nationality, or merged their religion in that of the Pagan kingdoms where they dwelt. The loyalty and allegiance of the modern “colonists “to the “mother country” is as nothing compared to the devotion with which these foreign Israelites regarded the name of Zion, and the rites and solemnities performed within her gates. The authority of the Sanhedrim was faithfully acknowledged, respected, obeyed. Their “ecclesiastical calendar was fixed at Jerusalem.” Great as was the distance between the latter and Babylon, the new moons werd regularly signalled by the only “telegraph “then known. A beacon-fire first lighted on Mount Olivet — was repeated on Bethaccerem — and onwards thence, on every available mountain-top in Moab and the Hauran, till it reached its destination in the far East. As the most indubitable proof of the strength of the link which bound every absent child of Abraham to the City of the Great King, we are informed in the Talmud that each of these distant provinces and cities maintained at their own expense a separate synagogue at Jerusalem, in which their representative pilgrims were enabled annually to worship when attending the great festive celebrations :^-this, independent of the half-shekel contribution already alluded to for maintaining the services of the Temple. The Babylonish Jews indeed would seem to have been Hebrews of the Hebrews. Peter nowhere else out of Palestine could have cherished so much of a home feeling. It was a proverbial saying, u Whoever dwells in Babylon is as though he dwelt in the land of Israel” “Their language, probably a mixture of Hebrew and Nabatean, must have borne a near affinity to the Galilean dialect.”1 In a word, with the one exception of the sacred territory which was virtually closed against him, he would be as truly doing duty among his own nation in these diverse cities and pro-* vinces of the old plain of Shinar, as if he were still under the shadow of Gerizim or Zion.
As we have endeavoured in an early chapter of this volume to picture the surroundings of Peter’s boyhood and youth on the shores of the Galilean Lake, it may not be without interest to bring before us the scene of his last
1 Bib. Dta. years; — we may hope years of comparative calm, after a manhood of struggle and toil. Babylon,1 however shorn of its pristine splendour, occupied the same vast area of two hundred square miles, fifty-six in circumference. Adhering to its original construction, it was not, like other cities, formed of contiguous houses, but rather an assemblage of Parks or “Paradises “— more resembling our modern villas: — so that the dwellings really occip pied only a twentieth part of the ground included within the walls. We can think of our Apostle surrounded in that vast plain with very much the same wealth of vegetation as that on which his eye fell in the” Land of Qennesaret “and around” the spring of the fig-tree; “while the magnificent palace erected by Herod in the midst of his old familiar Tiberias had its counterpart in the Paradise of the King of Parthia — under whose sceptre the province was then placed. Of the home of Peter in this” palm country “of course we know nothing, save that we are warranted to infer it was gladdened by the society of her who had faithfully shared with him his labours and anxieties;” like himself no longer young, and unequal, we may well believe, to the more perilous and laborious journeys which marked the activity of St Paul.” “May we not trace,” the same writer adds,” an unconscious embodiment of his own experience, in the words which bid husbands to ’ give honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel (1 Pet. iii. 7; com p. 1 Cor. ix. 5). 2 Ou
l Some writers hare advocated that the Babylon here spoken of is not the ancient capital, but another city of the same name built on the Tigris bj Seleucus Nicator. We see, however, no good reason to support the trans* ference; still less admissible is the suggestion of others, that Babylon near Memphis in Egypt is intended; for the latter at this time, according to Strabo, was only a fort for a Roman garrison. (Strabo xvii. 1.)
s Dr Plumptre’s Biblical Studies. the authority of Metaphrastes, she was the daughter of Aristobulus, brother to Barnabas the Apostle, of whom more hereafter. Clement of Alexandria — reliable as an ecclesiastical historian — mentions Peter and Philip as the two Apostles “who had children; and that both took about their wives, who acted as their coadjutors in ministering to women at their own homes. By their means, the doctrine of the Lord penetrated without scandal into the privacy of women’s apartments.” 1
But to return. An interesting and important question remains to be considered and answered. Granted that such was the wide field of Peter’s final ministry, have we any historical proof that these Evangelistic efforts, extending over fifteen long years, were Crowned with success? We have a priori reason to expect that he who, filled with the Spirit of God, had been the means of leading many thousands by one sermon preached at Pentecost to a saving acceptance of the great salvation, — to whom moreover his Lord had three years previously by the visible symbol of the miraculous draught of fishes given promise of vast results — would not be left to tell the discouraging experience, “I have toiled all night and caught nothing.” We are enabled, however, to gather ample evidence that that success was great; — that his was the blessedness of those who had “turned many unto righteousness,” and who will at last have the glorious testimony that they “have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.” Jesus had assuredly not sent forth His chief under-shepherd to “feed His sheep” on barren pasture.
St Luke indeed is silent on these interesting facts. That sacred penman leaves us in no doubt as to the i Bib. Die in loot; other great Apostle’s triumphs in the vast missionary field of the West. We have entry after entry in the Acts as to the formation by St Paul of churches in the great capitals of Europe; — and doubtless the pen of the Evangelist would not have been reluctant to trace also the footsteps of St Peter, but for the valid reason, tbiit he was separated by half a continent from him. It has even been surmised, that having broken off suddenly the story of the one Apostle in the midst of his history, the threads of that story would have been gathered up again by the narrator, had he not himself been called to lay down his life for the Saviour he had served so well. The testimony, however, on which we are compelled to fall back is all the more valuable and convincing, coming as it does not from friends but foes. The evidence of Peter’s Apostolic labours and triumphs is substantiated not by converted Jew or Christian Evangelist, but by Pagan proconsul and Roman historian.
Forty years after the death of Peter — about the beginning of the second century, the younger Pliny had been appointed by the Emperor Trajan governor of two of the provinces which had specially come under the Apostle’s ministrations, — viz., Poutus and Bitbynia. A letter, well known in ecclesiastical history, was sent by the propraBtor to the Emperor, describing the religious condition in which he had found these provinces. The letter was one of perplexity, anxiety, complaint And what was the cause? He writes, earnestly desirous to receive instructions from his imperial master, as to what measures he is to adopt in order to arrest the rapidly-growing apostacy from the national faith. In vivid language, he represents that the Temples of the gods are shut, and the sacrifices intended for the altar left without purchasers: — that the desertion was universal. Men and women of all ranks and ages — not excepting the young — were flocking to the churches of the Christians. He speaks of the “pestilent heresy 99 spreading like a contagion from city to city, and that the villages and country places had caught the infection as well as the populous centres. It is evident, moreover, from the tenor of his epistle, that he was deeply impressed with the purity and blamelessness of the Christians’ lives, — the oaths they had voluntarily taken to abstain from sin, — not only from sensuality — but from the sins of violence — such as theft and murder, which seemed to have been prevalent.” We see,” says the author of “Sermons on the Apostolic Age “— referring to this very letter, and comparing it with some of Peter’s own utterances in writing to his converts —” how by ’ their well-doing they put to silence the ignorance of foolish men ‘: — how by their universal practice * not to be thieves, or murderers, or evil-doers, they disarmed the suspicions alike of the proconsul and of his imperial master “(p. 99). Pliny was himself a humane man, and he served under the least tyrannical of the Caesars; yet he mentions, in the same document, that he had attempted coercive measures which had been attended with a very partial success. He gives indeed the most indubitable evidence, that in less than half a century the temples of Jupiter and Mars were deserted, and the religion of the crucified Jesus — which he branded by the name of” an absurd superstition “— had taken their place, and that scourge and prison had failed to shake the faith of the votaries. We have no” roll-call 99 given us of the names of this noble army of martyrs. The only illustrious exception, in the same place and era, wus the aged Ignatius, whose fidelity had exacted the penalty of a savage death in the Roman amphitheatre. But doubtless there were not a few who had testified with unshaken confidence to the faith of Christ: and the famous saying of Tertullian had proved true in these Asiatic provinces as elsewhere, “The more you mow ns down, the more do we increase. The blood of Christians is their seed.”
Nor does the testimony of Pliny stand alone. Those who have fully investigated this subject have been able to sist other corroborative witnesses. Among these is the Greek satirist Lucian — who speaks of “Fortius” “being full of atheists and Christians.” “It is incredible,” are his words, “with what alacrity these people support and defend their cause; they spare nothing in short to promote it: they had been taught that they were all brethren, and that, quitting Our Grecian gods, they must worship their Own sophist, who was crucified, and live in obedience to His laws. These poor creatures are firmly persuaded they shall one day enjoy eternal life; therefore they despise death with wonderful courage, and offer themselves voluntarily to punishment. They looked with contempt on all worldly treasures, and held everything in common; a maxim which they had most irrationally taken up.” We pass on a few centuries later, and” the pestilent heresy 99 has reached still more gigantic proportions. The Bishop’s Sees in Asia Minor alone, equalled in number those in Italy, Spain, and France combined. In the fifth century there were 388 dibCeses. At the second general
1 The reader is referred to the chapter by author of “Essays on the Ohureh,” where the story of Peter’s latter days, as the Apostle of the Circumcision, is vividly narrated; indeed forming the most valuable portion et a volume of unusaal interest. council of Constantinople, held A.B. 381, while the European Bishops numbered ^ess than ten, the Eastern pnes present amounted to a hundred. From all this it is, evident, alike how vast was. Peter/s field of labour* extending from the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the iEgean Sea; and how great, under God, was the harvest which he. and those who followed him, were instrumental in gathering in. It was truly a gigantic task — when be and his handful of coadjutors issued forth from the gates of Antioch bearing the keys of the kingdom* In the midst of his arduous and often cheerless labours, the words, of his Master — whose significancy were not understood at the time — would frequently be recalled, “Have faith in God.” Among the varied auxiliaries which had aided him and those associated with, him in his work, opening the way for the proclamation of the. truth among Jew and Gentile, there was one that demands special reference and acknowledgment — viz., the wide diffusion, through the Asiatic cities, of the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament Scriptures, made at Alexandria. Greek was theu-r-mpre than French is at the present day — the universal language spoken, The translation of the sacred books into that “tongue of many nations” was the ploughshare which prepared the furrow for the reception of the immortal seed. The Holy Record was no longer a sealed volume to the thousands who were longing for something better than their own effete creeds and systems could supply. Seeking after the true God “if haply they might find Him,” the Greeks — so numerous in these cities of the Dispersion — were freely admitted into the synagogues of their Jewish brethren, and there heard the Hebrew Scriptures i lb.: quoting from Bingham’s Antiquities, in loo. read and expounded in their own unrivalled tongue. “Under the influence of this wider instruction, a Greek body grew up around the Synagogue, not admitted into the Jewish Church, and yet holding a recognised position with regard to it, which was able to apprehend the Apostolic teaching, and ready to receive it.” 1
Here would seem to be the befitting time and place to refer to the arbitrary assumption made by Romanists regarding Peter’s residence in “Babylon n — founded on the innocent closing reference in the postscript to his First Epistle. The strange thing is, that the belief seems to have remained for centuries undisturbed, and is still clung to pertinaciously by the adherents of the Papacy: not only so, but it has enlisted in its favour not a few names of eminence and repute among Protestant divines, such as Grotius, Macknight, Lardner, Schaff and Wieseler; viz., that the Babylon there mentioned was a figurative name or metonomy for Bomb, from which place the Prince of the Apostles wrote, and where he had been established in his Episcopate for twenty-five years. One ancient authority of note can alone be quoted in support of the claim. Eusebius, a.d. 325, Bishop of Csesarea, on the alleged authority of Papias and Clement of Alexandria, accepts this non-natural interpretation. But it will be observed that he only asserts the fact from hearsay. His words are: “Peter mentions Mark in his First Epistle, which, they say, he wrote in Rome itself — and that he signifies this by calling that city figuratively ‘Babylon.’” In this view Eusebius is supported by iEcumenius, Jeromey and Isidore of Seville.2
i Canon Westcott. * See Alford, Proleg.
This perversion of a simple name seems obvionsly to have arisen from what we have previously stated, — the apparent improbability of the Apostle fixing his residence and exercising his ministrations in a place which prophecy had described as the tenantless haunt of the owl, the dragon, and the satyr.
We have sufficiently, we trust, met this objection. Moreover — as it has again and again been noted, who would ever have dreamt of a plain, unsophisticated man going out of his way to use a trope — a poetical simile — when a prosaic one suited him and his Epistle so much better 1 Torquay has been called the Montpelier of England: — who, in writing a letter to a distant friend, unless in a very facetious mood, would date his epistle not Torquay but “Montpelier f” London is not unfrequently called “the modern Babylon.” Strange, if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to pen a pastoral from his palace at Lambeth to the clergy of his archiepiscopal diocese, and date it, not “London,” but “Babylon!” In the words of the learned Michaelis, making analogous suppositions, such “would be a greater piece of pedantry than ever was laid to the charge of the learned.”1 It is well known that those who defend so forced a nomenclature, appeal to a similar use of the word in the Apocalypse of St John, where Borne the city of the seven hills is spoken of as “the Great Babylon.” But the two cases can bear no comparison. Peter’s letter, first of all, was written thirty-five years before that of John. He was a stranger alike to
i It is strange that even so safe and reliable a guide as Dr Care is disposed to reject the literal Babylon and accept the metaphorical reference to Jerusalem, “no longer now the Holy City, but a kind of spiritual Babylon, in which the Church of Christ did at this time groan, under great servitude and captivity.”
the words and the style of that divine allegory. Besides, the Book of the Revelation, after the opening, is a sustained metaphor throughout, — -composed of tropes; whereas Peter’s is a plain, simple, earnest, hortatory, matter-of-fact Epistle; where anything poetical or figurative would he utterly out of place.
As an additional confirmation of the Assyrian Baby* Ion and not Rome being referred to — it has been noted by Niebuhr, that the order of the provinces quoted in his First Epistle is what would have suggested itself to one describing them who was situated in Babylon* The enumeration begins nearest hand, with the province in the east, — thence west, and terminating with the south and most distant. Dean Alford gives this farther corroboration of the natural interpretation, that “Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the sixth century, quotes the conclusion of the Epistle as a proof of the early progress of the Christian religion, without the bounds of the Roman Empire: by which therefore we perceive that by Babylon he did not understand Rome.” *
It is evident, indeed, unless there had been this theory to maintain, that so gratuitous and unnatural an assumption would never have been propounded. Babylon with its thronging Jewish and Gentile population has now passed away, and only heaps of ruin remain to memorialise its greatness. Had this old capital of the Euphrates survived, as the capital of the Tiber has done, perchance among its literary treasures and traditions
i Cardinal Baronius is driren to the disingenuous reason in accounting for the writer resorting to the metaphorical name, — that he did so in order the more successfully to evade detection after his escape from prison in Jerusalem — a surmise at once to be dismissed as imputing to the prince of the Apostles a worldly policy Hnd pusillanimity unworthy of his better and manlier days.
* Alford, Proleg. 1st Peter, p. 24(5. might have been found some interesting and valuable mementoes of Peter’s labours, more reliable far than the legends and relics with which his name is associated in Rome. But the besom of destruction has dealt impartially with the records alike of Chaldean art and Greek and Christian literature. Who can tell, but possibly the patient excavator may yet exhume from these desolate mounds some papyrus roll that may tend to throw valuable light on this debated point, or rather may substantiate what all dispassionate minds can have little reason to doubt or question, that not the least busy or eventful of Peter’s years, though his closing ones, were spent in the ancient “beauty of the Chaldee’s excellency;” and that from his home in Babylon — in no forced metaphorical sense — those two great letters of his were written which we shall consider in next chapter.
Sir