96 CHAPTER III THE APOSTOLIC AGE provinces of Asia Minor, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, heathen historians.224 A few years afterwards followed Beraea, Athens, Crete, Patmos, Malta, Puteoli, come also the destruction of Jerusalem, which must have made into view as points where the Christian faith was plant- an overpowering impression and broken the last ties ed. Through the eunuch converted by Philip, it reached which bound Jewish Christianity to the old theocracy. Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians.221 As early as a.d. The event is indeed brought before us in the prophecy 58 Paul could say: “From Jerusalem and round about of Christ as recorded in the Gospels, but for the terrible even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of fulfilment we are dependent on the account of an unbeChrist.”222 He afterwards carried it to Rome, where it had lieving Jew, which, as the testimony of an enemy, is all already been known before, and possibly as far as Spain, the more impressive. the western boundary of the empire.223 The remaining thirty years of the first century are inThe nationalities reached by the gospel in the first volved in mysterious darkness, illuminated only by the century were the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, and writings of John. This is a period of church history about the languages used were the Hebrew or Aramaic, and es- which we know least and would like to know most. This pecially the Greek, which was at that time the organ of period is the favorite field for ecclesiastical fables and civilization and of international intercourse within the critical conjectures. How thankfully would the historian Roman empire. The contemporary secular history in- hail the discovery of any new authentic documents becludes the reigns of the Roman Emperors from Tiberius tween the martyrdom of Peter and Paul and the death of to Nero and Domitian, who either ignored or persecuted John, and again between the death of John and the age of Christianity. We are brought directly into contact with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. King Herod Agrippa I. (grandson of Herod the Great), Causes of Success. the murderer of the apostle, James the Elder; with his As to the numerical strength of Christianity at the son King Agrippa II. (the last of the Herodian house), close of the first century, we have no information whatwho with his sister Bernice (a most corrupt woman) lis- ever. Statistical reports were unknown in those days. The tened to Paul’s defense; with two Roman governors, Fe- estimate of half a million among the one hundred millix and Festus; with Pharisees and Sadducees; with Stoics lions or more inhabitants of the Roman empire is proband Epicureans; with the temple and theatre at Ephesus, ably exaggerated. with the court of the Areopagus at Athens, and with CaeThe pentecostal conversion of three thousand in sar’s palace in Rome. one day at Jerusalem,225 and the “immense multitude” of Sources of Information. martyrs under Nero,226 favor a high estimate. The churchThe author of Acts records the heroic march of es in Antioch also, Ephesus, and Corinth were strong Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of enough to bear the strain of controversy and division heathenism with the same artless simplicity and serene into parties.227 But the majority of congregations were faith as the Evangelists tell the story of Jesus; well know- no doubt small, often a mere handful of poor people. In ing that it needs no embellishment, no apology, no sub- the country districts paganism (as the name indicates) jective reflections, and that it will surely triumph by its lingered longest, even beyond the age of Constantine. inherent spiritual power. The Christian converts belonged mostly to the middle The Acts and the Pauline Epistles accompany us and lower classes of society, such as fishermen, peasants, with reliable information down to the year 63. Peter and mechanics, traders, freedmen, slaves. St. Paul says: “Not Paul are lost out of sight in the lurid fires of the Neroni- many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many an persecution which seemed to consume Christianity 224 Unless we find allusions to it in the Revelation of itself. We know nothing certain of that satanic spectaJohn, 6:9-11; 17:6; 18:24, comp. 18:20 (“ye holy apostles and cle from authentic sources beyond the information of 221 Acts 8:27. 222 Rom. 15:19. 223 Rom. 15:24. Comp. Clement of Rome, Ad Cor. c.5, μ s s. This passage, however, does not necessarily. mean Spain, and Paul’s journey to Spain stands or falls with the hypothesis of his second Roman captivity.
prophets”). See Bleek, Vorlesungen über die Apokalypse,Berlin, 1862, p. 120. 225 Acts 2:41. 226 Tacitus, Anal. XV. 44, speaks of a “multitudo ingens”who were convicted of the “odium generis humani,” i.e. of Christianity (regarded as a Jewish sect), and cruelly executed under Nero in 64. 227 Gal. 2:1 sqq.; 1 Cor. 3:3 sqq.
