Eusebus Pamphilia Parts 1,2 and 3

108 BOOK II CHAPTER IV After the Death of Tiberius, Caius appointed Agrippa King of the Jews, having punished Herod with Perpetual Exile. with his whole house, through a divine revelation and the agency of Peter, first received faith in Christ;270 and after him a multitude of other Greeks in Antioch,271 to whom those who were scattered by the persecution of Stephen had preached the Gospel. When the church of Antioch was now increasing and abounding, and a multitude of prophets from Jerusalem were on the ground,272 among them Barnabas and Paul and in addition many other brethren, the name of Christians first sprang up there,273 as from a fresh and life-giving fountain.274 4. And Agabus, one of the prophets who was with them, uttered a prophecy concerning the famine which was about to take place,275 and Paul and Barnabas were sent to relieve the necessities of the brethren.276 CHAPTER IV. After the Death of Tiberius, Caius appointed Agrippa King of the Jews, having punished Herod with Perpetual Exile.

1. Tiberius died, after having reigned about twenty-two years,277 From Aug. 29, a.d. 14, to March 16, a.d. 37. and Caius succeeded him in the empire.278 He immediately gave the government of the Jews to Agrippa,279 making him king over the tetrarchies of Philip and of Lysanias; in addition to which he bestowed upon him, not long afterward, the tetrarchy of Herod,280 having punished Herod (the one under whom the Saviour suffered281) and his wife Herodias with perpetual exile282 on account of numerous crimes. Josephus is a witness to these facts.283 270 See Acts x. 1 sq.

271 See Acts xi. 20. The Textus Receptus of the New Testament reads at this point ῾Ελληνιστ€ς, a reading which is strongly supported by external testimony and adopted by Westcott and Hort. But the internal evidence seems to demand ῞Ελληνας, and this reading is found in some of the oldest versions and in a few mss., and is adopted by most modern critics, including Tischendorf. Eusebius is a witness for the latter reading. He takes the word ῞Ελληνας in a broad sense to indicate all that are not Jews, as is clear from his insertion of the ἄλλων, “other Greeks,” after speaking of Cornelius, who was not a Greek, but a Roman. Closs accordingly translates Nichtjuden, and Stigloher Heiden.

272 See Acts xi. 22 sqq.

273 See Acts xi. 26. This name was first given to the disciples by the heathen of Antioch, not by the Jews, to whom the word “Christ” meant too much; nor by the disciples themselves, for the word seldom appears in the New Testament, and nowhere in the mouth of a disciple. The word χριστιανός has a Latin termination, but this does not prove that it was invented by Romans, for Latinisms were common in the Greek of that day. It was probably originally given as a term of contempt, but accepted by the disciples as a term of the highest honor.

274 ἀπ᾽ εὐθαλοῦς καὶ γονίμου πηγῆς. Two mss., followed by Stephanus, Valesius, Closs, and Crusè, read γῆς; but all the other mss., together with Rufinus, support the reading πηγῆς, which is adopted by the majority of editors.

275 See Acts xi. 28. Agabus is known to us only from this and one other passage of the Acts (xxi. 10), where he foretells the imprisonment of Paul. The famine here referred to took place in the reign of Claudius, where Eusebius puts it when he mentions it again in chap.

8. He cannot therefore be accused, as many accuse him, of putting the famine itself into the reign of Tiberius, and hence of committing a chronological error. He is following the account of the Acts, and mentions the prominent fact of the famine in that connection, without thinking of chronological order. His method is, to be sure, loose, as he does not inform his readers that he is anticipating by a number of years, but leaves them to discover it for themselves when they find the same subject taken up again after a digression of four chapters.

Upon the famine itself, see below, chap. 8 276 See Acts xi. 29, 30.

277 From Aug. 29, a.d. 14, to March 16, a.d. 37.

278 Caius ruled from the death of Tiberius until Jan. 24, a.d. 41.

279 Herod Agrippa I. He was a son of Aristobulus, and a grandson of Herod the Great. He was educated in Rome and gained high favor with Caius, and upon the latter’s accession to the throne received the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias, and in a.d. 39 the tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea, which had belonged to Herod Antipas. After the death of Caius, his successor, Claudius, appointed him also king over the province of Judea and Samaria, which made him ruler of all Palestine, a dominion as extensive as that of Herod the Great. He was a strict observer of the Jewish law, and courted the favor of the Jews with success. It was by him that James the Elder was beheaded, and Peter imprisoned (Acts xii.). He died of a terrible disease in a.d. 44. See below, chap. 10.

280 Herod Antipas.

281 See Luke xxiii. 7–11.

282 He was banished in a.d. 39 to Lugdunum in Gaul (according to Josephus, Ant. XVIII. 7. 2; or to Spain, according to his B. J. II. 9. 6), and died in Spain (according to B. J. II. 9. 6).

283 See Ant. XVIII. 6 and 7, and B. J. II. 9.