AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH UPON THE NEW TESTAMENT. 161 



test the accuracy of them in their accounts of the beginning 

 of the great work of giving the Gospel to the heathen world. 

 Only a few of these tests can be examined in the remainder of 

 this short essay. 



(8) Dispersions. — In the second chapter of the Acts we 

 read a familiar passage telling us of the Jews and proselytes 

 who had come to the hrst Pentecostal feast after the crucifixion, 

 which had taken place at the preceding Passover. Parthians, 

 Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, 

 Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Lybia, Kome, Crete, 

 and Arabia are mentioned. 



A letter of Agrippa 1. to Caligula (Eawlinson, Bampton 

 Lectures^ p. 248) reads as follows — 



" The holy city, the place of my nativity, is the metropolis, not of 

 Judea only but of well-nigh every other country, by means of the 

 colonies which have been sent out from it from time to time — some 

 to the neighbouring countries of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Coele- 

 Syria — some to most distant regions, as Pamphylia, Cilicia, Asia, as 

 far as Bithynia, and the recesses of Pontus, etc." 



(9) Herod Agrippa L— This same Herod Agrippa, who, 

 Josephus shows us, reigned over the whole of the dominions 

 of his grandfather, Herod the Great, figures largely as an enemy 

 of the Church in the twelfth chapter of the Acts. 



" Now, about that time, Herod, the King, put forth his hand to vex 

 certain of the Church. And he killed James, the brother of John, 

 with the sword, and, when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he 

 proceeded to seize Peter also." 



In the latter part of the same chapter the brilliant scene in 

 Csesarea is described, in which the sentence of death in a 

 terrible form came to him in the midst of his gldry, when he 

 was hailed as a god by the great assembly. 



When we turn from this account to that which Josephus 

 gives {Ant. XIX, viii, 2) we have a very similar account of 

 Herod's sin and his dreadful death. Eew accounts of an 

 historical event given from standpoints so different agree 

 better than these two of a notable event wJiich occurred in the 

 year 44 a.d. 



As in studying the Gospels and the earlier chapters of the 

 Acts we find the writers familiar with all the conditions of the 

 times, localities, modes of life, religious parties and opinions, 

 changing forms of government and rulers, whether Herodian, 

 Homan, or strictly Jewish, so we will find just as perfect a 



M 



