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2.4.1 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
Primitive Jewish Christianity
The Conflict with Judaism - Bearing Testimony
There is much in the account of those days contained in the early chapters of the Book of Acts that is calculated to convey the impression that the disciples passed a large part of their life in the blaze of publicity, that they were constantly before the eyes of all the people, and that their fame was upon everybody’s lips. But such an idea is hardly in accord with the actual facts.
That they spoke boldly in the name of Jesus there is no doubt, and that they produced a profound impression upon those that heard them, and won many converts to their faith in the Messiah, cannot be questioned. They doubtless improved the frequent opportunities afforded by the presence of Jewish worshippers in the temple to speak to them of the Messiah Jesus, and it is altogether likely that they proclaimed him openly in the public streets and squares, or wherever they could get a crowd together.
Conscious that their great duty was witness bearing, they must have seized every available occasion to bear testimony to him, whether in public or in private. [The utterances of Peter and others recorded in Acts 3 sq. are not to be regarded as formal discourses delivered on particular occasions, but rather as mere examples of the kind of testimony borne by hem and by his fellows on all occasions. That they represent so accurately the views of the early disciples is due, not to the fact that they are stenographic reports of particular speeches, but that they are taken from primitive Jewish Christian documents dating, doubtless, from a very early period.]
But Jerusalem was a large and busy city, and the presence of the disciples can hardly have made any wide impression, at any rate for some time. That they should be preaching a faith which had been completely discredited by the death of their leader, and should still be proclaiming that leader as the Messiah, must have seemed so foolish to most of those that happened to know of it, that they could hardly regard them as anything else than witless and harmless fanatics.
The fact that they never thought of attacking or questioning the validity of the Jewish law, that they were not revolutionists in any sense, but, on the contrary, the most devout observers of ancestral law and custom, removed them from the category of dangerous characters who needed to be kept under strict and constant surveillance.
Of course it was not a crime for them to declare their continued devotion to Jesus, and that there could be any danger in allowing them to do so can hardly have suggested itself to any one, at least for some time. Only when their number had grown large, and their influence had come to be somewhat widely felt among the common people, did the authorities think it worth while to take cognizance of them. And the it is significant that it was not the Pharisees who brought accusations against them, as in the case of Jesus, but the captain of the temple and the priests and the Sadduceess [Acts 4:1, 5:17], or, in other words, the political rather than the religious leaders of the Jews.
It has been asserted by many scholars that it is inconceivable that the Christians should have been attacked by the Sadducees, and that the Pharisees, the enemies of Christ, should not have been the ringleaders. But the assertion is based upon a misconception of the principles of the early disciples.
There is no reason why the Pharisees should proceed against such strict and consistent Jews as they were. They might well think that the death of Jesus had taken from the movement all Messianic significance, and might well be content to leave such pious Israelites alone, as entirely harmless from a religious point of view. When they were arrested, it was apparently not as teachers of another religion, or as enemies of the law, but simply as disturbers of the public peace, who were gathering crowds about them without license and were threatening a tumult of serious proportions.
But though Luke is undoubtedly correct in stating that the Sadducees and no the Pharisees were responsible for the attack upon the Christians that took place at this time, the reason which he fives for their hostility betrays a misapprehension of their true character. The Sadducees were bot bigoted theologians, who desired to persecute and stop the mouths of all that differed with them. It was not because the disciples preached the resurrection from the dead that they proceeded against them, but because they were creating too much of an excitement in the city, and needed to have their freedom of speech somewhat curtailed. [There can be little doubt that the agency of the Sadducees in the arrest of the early Christians was recorded in the sources that the author of the Acts used, and that he added the motive which seemed to him alone to explain their course. There is no discoverable reason otherwise why he should have departed from the tradition as to the hostility of the Pharisees against Jesus, which he follows in his Gospel, and should have made the Sadducees rather than the Pharisees the instigators of the attack.]
The nature of the punishment inflicted by the authorities upon Peter and John [Acts 4:3, sq., 5:18, sq.] goes to confirm the general conclusion that has been drawn. Surprise has been expressed that when they had been arrested, they should have been released again so soon. But if the object was simply to put some restraint upon their freedom of speech and action, and thus avoid the tumults and disturbances which their public preaching was causing, the course which the authorities are represented to have taken was entirely natural.
Used by permission of the publisher.
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