In the second place, we have an account in the Epistle to the Galatians of a disagreement between Paul and Peter. In the eyes of the Tübingen school this is of vast importance. But the significance of a disagreement depends entirely upon its nature. Because two bishops differ on a point of administration, it is not to be concluded that they represent antagonistic systems of theology or polity. No more does it follow, because Paul and Peter differed on the propriety of eating, or refraining from eating, with the Gentiles of Antioch, under a special set of circumstances, that there was any radical antagonism between them as respects principles. On the contrary, the context shows that the question was not so much about the acknowledgment of a principle, as about fidelity to a principle acknowledged in common by both Paul and Peter. Paul says of Peter, "Before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision" (Gal. ii. 12). This language plainly indicates, that, in the opinion of Paul, the real views of Peter were indentical with his own; that he not only considered the door of the Church open to the Gentiles, but that within the Church the Gentiles were to stand on an equality with the Jews. Peter was right in theory. But those who came from James had never been accustomed to association with the Gentiles; Peter was afraid that their Jewish prejudices would be shocked overmuch by his free intercourse with the Gentiles, and so withdrew from their table. This seemed to Paul to be pushing accommodation to the sacrifice of principle, and drew forth his rebuke. That Paul

introduces this scene is no indication of a permanent rupture between him and Peter. He introduces it as one factor in the proof that in communication with the chief apostles he had maintained his equality with them, had asserted his apostleship, and asserted it consistently with his belief in the freedom of the Gentiles from the law of Moses. There is nothing here, or elsewhere, to indicate that any thing more than this single disagreement on a point of conduct ever came between. him and Peter. He gives no hint that he is at war with the apostle of the circumcision. On the contrary, he acknowledges his apostleship, the effectiveness of his apostleship, and is careful to specify that he, as well as James and John, gave to himself the right hand of fellowship (Gal. ii. 7–10).1

The single passage in Galatians ought to be regarded as refuting the charge of Baur, that the Acts of the Apostles give a false account of Peter, and represent him as being much more free and generous toward the Gentiles than he really was. There is nothing in the Acts which goes beyond the implications of Paul's statement that Peter, so far as his private convictions were concerned, was free to eat with the Gentiles. In

1 The suggestion that Paul, in his mention of false apostles (2 Cor. xi. 13), refers to Peter and others of the Twelve is too absurd for even the most captious critic, being in flagrant contradiction of what Paul himself says in his Epistles. There were then in the Church those who might be characterized as false apostles. Paul is allowed to speak of such without being suspected of insinuations against the Twelve. Why not grant the same privilege to the latter? Surely criticism is making an unseemly exhibition of its bias, and running into gratuitous libel, when it assumes that John in the Apocalypse, in the face of his former commendation of Paul, proceeds to number him with false apostles.

like manner, a candid comparison of the Acts with the Epistles will vindicate the truthfulness of the former with respect to Paul. Baur, indeed, affirms that the Epistles forbid the conclusion that Paul could have made so great concessions to Jewish prejudices as appears in the narrative of the Acts. But this springs from an obstinate bent, characteristic of the whole Tübingen exposition, to construct a strait-jacket for Paul, to bind him to act always according to the letter of his most spirited protests against Jewish ceremonialism. It ignores the glimpses of an irenic spirit which are given in the Epistles. We have here unmistakable intimations that Paul was ready to indulge no small measure of accommodation: "Unto the Jews," he says, "I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law" (1 Cor. ix. 20). It was in pursuance of this maxim that he caused Timothy, who had a Jewish mother, to be circumcised. Circumcision insisted upon as a necessity, he was ready to oppose with his utmost vigor, as the Epistle to the Galatians shows; but circumcision regarded as mere matter of expediency, and where the subject was of Jewish lineage, he had no scruple about practising himself. The author of the Acts really makes Paul no more Jewish than do his own Epistles. Moreover, that he did not design a perversion of the truth in order to commend the apostleship of Paul to his adversaries is indicated by the fact that he records the election of Matthias to the single vacancy in the apostolic college, a record that evidently might be just so much capital in

the hands of the opponents of the apostolic claims of Paul.1

One or two historical difficulties lie upon the surface of the narrative in the Acts. The date assigned to the insurrectionist Theudas is earlier, by forty years or more, than that of the insurrectionist of the same name who is described by Josephus.2 But this is far from being proof positive of an error on the part of the author of the Acts. The mistake, if there was a mistake, may have been with Josephus. Very likely neither writer was at fault. It would be nothing strange if more than one Theudas was a leader in a seditious uprising. Names were often repeated in those times. The annals of Jewish rebellion present in a brief period no less than four with the name of Simon, and three with the name of Judas. Josephus describes Judæa

1 This fact should be regarded as a weighty comment on the conclusion of Baur, that the mention of only twelve thrones in the Apocalypse was meant to rule out Paul from the apostolic dignity. It should also be credited with some weight against the charge that the author of the Acts purposely mutilated the history by omitting every thing counter to a mediatorial design. Baur is especially exercised over the omission of an affair of such tremendous import as Paul's reproof of Peter at Antioch, an omission whose wilful intent, as he claims, is made quite apparent by the mention of such a subordinate matter as the dispute between Paul and Barnabas. But it is to be presumed that the affair at Antioch, if viewed at all by the author of the Acts, was not viewed through the magnifying glasses of Tübingen. The proof is wanting that it was any thing more than a passing episode. Indeed, the large-heartedness of both of the apostles is not a bad guaranty that they speedily came to a good understanding. In any event, the matter had no direct bearing upon Paul's journeys. How, then, should the historian, in a rapid sketch of these journeys, be under strict obligation to turn aside to notice such an episode? The dispute with Barnabas, on the other hand, had a most palpable connection with the great missionary tour upon which Paul was just entering.

2 Antiq., xx. 5. 1.

as being the theatre of a great number of tumults and rebellions in the disturbed era which followed the death of Herod the Great.1 Here surely was room enough for the Theudas of the Acts. Possibly, as has been suggested, Theudas was another name for the Judas or the Simon who is mentioned by Josephus among the authors of sedition in this era. A second difficulty is the mention in the Acts of a journey to Jerusalem, by Paul, between his first visit there as a convert to Christianity and that which fell at the time of the council (xi. 30; xii. 25); whereas Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians omits all mention of such a visit. But Paul's omission may be explained from the fact that it was only a hasty journey, for the sake of carrying funds to the needy church at Jerusalem, and resulted in no intercourse of any moment with the other apostles. Paul was speaking in Galatians of the instances in which he had communicated with the apostles, and might very naturally pass by a journey which resulted in no such communication. In any case, the occasion which the Acts assign to the journey, namely, the famine-stricken state of the brethren in Judæa, -is known from secular sources 2 to have been a fact about the time that the journey must have occurred. There is, therefore, neither in this nor in the preceding instance, any adequate ground for impeaching the truthfulness of the record.3

1 Antiq., xvii. 10. 2 Josephus, Antiq., xx. 2. 5, 5. 2.

8 Other difficulties are of course found by those who are bent upon finding them. A brief narrative cannot present every side of a transaction. Accordingly, a biassed criticism, catching a glimpse of another side than the one specially elucidated, has an opportunity to proclaim a contradiction. For example, Baur thinks it a serious discrepancy that