[269] 3. EPHESUS. (XIX 1) AND IT CAME TO PASS, THAT, WHILE APOLLOS WAS AT CORINTH, PAUL, HAVING PASSED THROUGH THE UPPER DISTRICTS, CAME TO EPHESUS. (8) AND HE ENTERED INTO THE SYNAGOGUE, AND SPAKE BOLDLY FOR THE SPACE OF THREE MONTHS, REASONING AND PERSUADING AS TO WHAT CONCERNS THE KINGDOM OF GOD. (9) BUT WHEN SOME WERE HARDENED AND DISOBEDIENT, SPEAKING EVIL OF THE WAY BEFORE THE MULTITUDE, HE DEPARTED FROM THEM AND SEPARATED THE DISCIPLES, REASONING DAILY IN THE SCHOOL OF TYRANNUS [FROM THE FIFTH TO THE TENTH HOUR]. (10) AND THIS CONTINUED FOR THE SPACE OF TWO YEARS.

[270] The distinction between the period of preaching in the synagogue and the direct address to the Ephesian population is very clearly marked, and the times given in each case. In vv. 2-7 a strange episode is related before Paul entered the synagogue. He found twelve men who had been baptised by the baptism of John, and induced them to accept re-baptism. This episode I must confess not to understand. It interrupts the regular method of Luke's narrative; for in all similar cases, Paul goes to the synagogue, and his regular efforts for his own people are related before any exceptional cases are recorded. The circumstances, too, are difficult. How had these twelve escaped the notice of Aquila, Priscilla, and Apollos, and yet attracted Paul's attention before he went to the synagogue? Perhaps the intention is to represent Paul as completing and perfecting the work begun by Apollos; re-baptism was, apparently, not thought necessary for Apollos, and now Paul lays down the principle that it is required in all such cases. But that seems distinctly below the level on which Luke's conception of Paul is pitched. If there were any authority in MS. or ancient Versions to omit the episode, one would be inclined to take that course. As there is none, I must acknowledge that I cannot reconcile it with the conception of Luke's method, founded. on other parts of the narrative, which is maintained in this book. Possibly better knowledge about the early history of the Ephesian Church might give this episode more significance and importance in the development history than it seems to possess.

We should be glad to know more about the lecture room of Tyrannus. It played the same part in Ephesus [271] that the house of Titius Justus adjoining the synagogue did in Corinth. Here Paul regularly taught every day; and the analogy which we have noticed in other cases (pp. 75, 243) between his position, as it would appear to the general population, and that of the rhetors and philosophers of the time, is very marked. There is one difference, according to the Bezan Text of v. 9: Paul taught after the usual work of the lecture-room was concluded, i.e., "after business hours ". Doubtless he himself began to work (XX 34, I Cor. IV 12) before sunrise and continued at his trade till closing time, an hour before noon. His hours of work are defined by himself, I Thess. II 9, "ye remember our labour and toil, working day and night "; there, as often in ancient literature, the hours before daybreak are called "night,"and his rule at Thessalonica may be extended to Ephesus. Public life in the Ionian cities ended regularly at the fifth hour; and we may add to the facts elsewhere stated a regulation at Attaleia in Lydia that public distribution of oil should be "from the first to the fifth hour" 1 . Thus Paul himself would be free, and the lecture-room would be disengaged, after the fifth hour; and the time, which was devoted generally to home-life and rest, was applied by him to mission-work.

In the following narrative the powers of Paul are brought into competition with those of Jewish exorcists and pagan dabblers in the black art, and his superiority to them demonstrated. Ephesus was a centre of all such magical arts and practices, and it was therefore inevitable that the new teaching should be brought in [272] contact with them and triumph over them. There can be no doubt that, in the conception of Luke, the measure of success lay in the extent to which Divine power and inspiration was communicated to a new Church; and perhaps the whole description may be defended as the extremist example of that view. But it seems undeniable that, when we contrast this passage with the great scene at Paphos, or the beautiful though less powerful scene with the ventriloquist at Philippi, there is in the Ephesian description something like vulgarity of tone, together with a certain vagueness and want of individuality, very different from those other scenes. Such details, too, as are given, are not always consistent and satisfactory. The seven sons in v. 14 change in an unintelligible way to two in v. 16 (except in the Bezan Text); and the statement that the seven were sons of a chief priest, looks more like a popular tale than a trustworthy historical statement. There is no warrant in the text for the view sometimes advocated, that Sceva was merely an impostor who pretended to be a chief priest. The money value of the books that were destroyed is another touch that is thoroughly characteristic of the oriental popular tale. The inability of the vulgar oriental mind to conceive any other aim, object, or standard in the world except money, and its utter slavery to gold, are familiar to every one who has seen the life of the people, or studied the Arabian Nights: in the West one sees nothing like the simple, childish frankness with which the ordinary oriental measures all things by gold, and can conceive of no other conscious aim except gold. So far as the oriental peasant is natural and unconscious, he is interesting and [273] delightful, and his complete difference of nature at once attracts and holds at a distance the man of Western thoughts; but so far as he consciously attempts to conceive motives and form plans, gold is his sole standard of value.

In this Ephesian description one feels the character, not of weighed and reasoned history, but of popular fancy; and I cannot explain it on the level of most of the narrative The writer is here rather a picker-up of current gossip, like Herodotus, than a real historian. The puzzle becomes still more difficult when we go on to v. 23, and find ourselves again on the same level as the finest parts of Acts. If there were many such contrasts in the book as between vv. 11-20 and 23-41, I should be a believer in the composite character of Acts . As it is, I confess the difficulty in this part; but the existence of some unsolved difficulties is not a bar to the view maintained in the present treatise (p. 16).

FOOTNOTES:

1 In an inscription, Bulletin de Corresp. Henn., 1887, p. 400.