AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH UPON THE NEW TESTAMENT. 151 



God, and speaks of Him as " the God of all, who made all 

 things." 



Paul asserted to his unbelieving audience the reality of the 

 resurrection ; and so does Aristides. 



Paul spoke of the judgment and of Christ as the Judge ; and 

 we find Aristides saying — 



" So shall they appear before the awful judgment, which through 

 Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is to come upon the whole human race." 



Paul tells the Athenians of their failure to worship the true 

 God who, he tells them, " is Lord of heaven and earth," and 

 that he " dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; neither is 

 worshipped with men's hands, as if He needed anything, seeing 

 that He giveth to all life and breath and all things." Paul was 

 speaking to philosophers at Athens, and the Athenian philoso- 

 pher Aristides, speaking of these philosophers, says — ■ 



" Herein, too, they err in asserting of Deity that any such thing 

 as deficiency can be present to it, as when they say He receives 

 sacrifice and requires burnt off'ering and libation and immolations of 

 men and temples. But God is not in need, and none of these 

 things is necessary to Him." 



It appears quite probable that this sketch of Paul's address, 

 recorded in Acts xvii, was in the mind of Aristides as he wTote 

 this Ajjologif. 



That Aristides was familiar with the book of Acts is 

 indicated in another way by the form of two quotations 

 from ch. xv, 20, 29. One is the negative form of the golden 

 rule. In the Harris SjTiac, section xv, we find the expression : 

 " and whatsoever they would not that others should do unto 

 them they do not to others." This is noted by Seeberg of 

 Berlin as an instance of " Western corruption of the text of 

 Acts XV, 20." Connected with this, we find the statement that 

 " of the food which is consecrated to idols they do not eat." 

 Seeberg concluded that this was in the copy of the Acts used by 

 Aristides, and that it indicates that the Acts was in " ecclesi- 

 astical use," and that by the time of Aristides it was " an ancient 

 book, handed down from the Apostolic age." (See Professor 

 Eendel Harris' Four Lectures on the Western Text.) 



But, without the textual criticism of specialists, the ordinary 

 reader can see, in almost every sentence of the part of the 

 Apology in which the character of the Christian community is 

 set forth, especially, indubitable indications of the writer's 

 acquaintance with books of the Xew Testament. 



