23. In the Acts, the mention of the deatk of Herod Agrippa (xii. 23), interposed between an arrival of St. Paul at Jerusalem and his return thence to Antioch (xi. 3o, xii. 25), would yield a firm resting-point for that portion of the narrative, viz., Easter A.D. 44 (Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 8. 2 ; comp. xix. 5, 1 ; Bell. 7ud. ii. 11. 6), could we be certain that the death of Agrippa took place soon after, or even in the same year with the Easter men tioned xii. 3, 4. (The time of Agrippa's death is determinable with high probability to the beginning of August of that year). But as it is possible that the writer, after his narrative of the acts of this king, thought fit to finish off all that he had to say about him before going on with the narrative about Paul and Bamabas, it may be that their mission to Jerusalem, and return, after the martyr dom of James, and deliverance of Peter, took place before the year 44. It might even be inferred from xi. 26 Kris E^y6/CTO Earl liXavolou, that the prophecy of Agabus was delivered before, or quite in the be ginning of 41 A.D., as the famine is known to have prevailed at Rome during the first two years of Claudius (41, 42 ; Dion Cass. lx. 11), but that it appears not to have been felt in Judma till after the death of Agrippa, in the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus and Tiberius Alexander (45-47 ; Joseph. Antiq. xx. 2. 5, and 5. 2). If there are conclusive reasons for assigning this second visit of St. Paul to Jerusalem to the year 44, they are to be sought elsewhere.
24. In Gal. i. 2, St. Paul speaks of two visits to Jerusalem, the one (i. 78) /Ler& Irg rpta, viz., from his conversion, the other (ii. i) Ire;n4 The first of these is evidently that of Acts ix. 26; that the other must be the second of those mentioned in the Acts, viz., that of xi. xii., has been under stood by many, and probably would have been by all, could it have been made to square with their chronology. The argument, restricted from irrele vant issues, lies in a very narrow compass. To make good his assertion (i. t 7, ff.), that he received not his gospel and commission from Peter, or any other man, but direct from Christ himself, the Apostle begins to enumerate the occasions on which alone- he saw and conversed with the other Apostles at Now, if the visit Gal. ii. I be not that of Acts xi. 12, it must be later (no one wishes to put it earlier): but if so, then he has not enumer ated all the occasions on which he saw the other Apostles. The very purpose of the recital forbids the supposition that he would omit any ; yet he had other conferences with the Apostles, if this was not the second of them (Comp. Meyer on Gal., p. 41). This one argument ought to be sufficient for all who accept as authoritative, both the statement of the history, and that of the epistle ; it is clearly useless to allege (with Wieseler, Chronol. des apost. Zeit alters, p. r80) that the Apostle, not writing a his tory, is not bound to recite all his visits to Jerusalem ; or (with Ewald, Gesch. vi. so), that he is concerned to enumerate only those visits which he made for the purpose of conferring with the Apostles. His inten tion is so plain, that if the visit Gal. ii. I cannot be identified with that in Acts xi. 12, one or other state ment must be rejected. Accordingly, Schleier macher (Einleit. ins N. 7: 569, ff.), Neander (Pfia.
a. Leit. i. r88 of the 4th ed.), De Wette (Kamm. in loc.), Meyer (a. s. p. 47), find the conclusion inevi table that Luke was misinformed in saying that Paul went up to Jerusalem as related in Acts xi. 30, because the Apostle himself declares that between his first visit, which can be no other than that of ix. 26, and the other, which can only have been that to the Council, as related in Acts xv., there was none intermediate. But, in fact, the circumstances of the visit, Gal. ii. 1, are perfectly compatible with those of Acts xi. xii., the only difficulty being that which is sup posed to lie in the chronology : whereas the dis crepancy between Gal. ii. r, ff., and Acts xv. is such that it is difficult to see how they can relate to the same fact. Which manifest incongruity furnishes Baur (Paulus, p. 12o, ff.) with an argument in support of his position, that the book of Acts is the work, not of a companion of St. Paul, but of some much later hand (in the 2d century). And, indeed, here also the conclusion does seem to be inevi table ; if both accounts are meant for the same oc currence, one of the two misrepresents the facts. Wieseler, to evade this conclusion, gives up the assumed identity of Gal. ii. 1 with Acts xv., and labours to shew that it was the visit xviii. 22, an hypothesis which needs no discussion, unless we are prepared to say that the Apostle was not even present at the Council, Acts xv.: for that a Council was held is not denied, even by those who contend that the account given of it in the Acts is not authentic ; and, if Paul was present at it, it is impossible to explain his passing it by in silence, as if it had no bearing upon the point which he is concerned to substantiate. His silence on the subject of the Council need be no difficulty to those who hold that he is here speaking of the visit Acts xi. xii. ; the explanation being, either that the Epistle was written before the Council, against which supposition the only weighty objection (and that not conclusive) is, that the first mention of Galatia occurs in the Acts after the Council (xvi. 6) ; or, that the Apostle breaks off from the tone of narrative into expostulation and indignant re proof just where the next thing to be mentioned, after the notice of Peter's dissimulation, was the settling of the matter in controversy by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. In short, the attempts to separate Gal. ii. 1 and Acts xi. xii. are plainly designed only to meet a supposed chrono logical difficulty. The time of Acts xii. being defined to A.D. 44, a term of 17 years, the sum of the 3 and the 14, supposed to be consecutive, would lead to A.D. 27, which cannot possibly be the year of Paul's conversion ; and, if both terms are sup posed to he dated from the same epoch, it would follow that the conversion took place A.D. 30, a date still too early for those who assign the Cruci fixion to that or to a later year. But not too early if the year of the passion be 29 A. D.; and in exact accordance with the most ancient traditions re corded by ecclesiastical writers, according to which the martyrdom of Stephen took place within a year after the Ascension, and St. Paul's conversion, which clearly was not much later, in the year after the Ascension, i.e., in this year 30 (Ordo Sad.