Book 3

VESPASIAN TO TRAJAN: THE DISTRIBUTION AND WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLES AND THEIR SUCCESSORS: ENEMIES WITHIN THE CHURCH: PERSECUTIONS

Countries evangelized by the apostles: the first Bishop of Rome: apostolic epistles: the apostles’ first successors

1. Such then was the plight of the Jews. Meanwhile the holy apostles and disciples of our Saviour were scattered over the whole world. Thomas, tradition tells us, was chosen for Parthia, Andrew for Scythia, John for Asia, where he remained till his death at Ephesus. Peter seems to have preached in Pontus, Galatia and Bithynia, Cappadocia and Asia, to the Jews of the Dispersion.¹Finally, he came to Rome where he was crucified, head downwards at his own request. What need be said of Paul, who from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum preached in all its fullness the gospel of Christ,² and later was martyred in Rome under Nero? This is exactly what Origen tells us in Volume III of his Commentary on Genesis.

2. After the martyrdom of Paul and Peter the first man to be appointed Bishop of Rome was Linus. He is mentioned by Paul when writing to Timothy from Rome, in the salutation at the end of epistle.³

3. Of Peter one epistle, known as his first, is accepted, and this the early fathers quoted freely, as undoubtedly genuine, in their own writings. But the second Petrine epistle we have been taught to regard as uncanonical; many, however, have thought it valuable and have honoured it with a place among the other Scriptures. On the other hand, in the case of the ‘Acta’ attributed to him, the ‘Gospel’ that bears his name, the ‘Preaching’ called his, and the so-called ‘Revelation’, we have no reason at all to include these among the traditional Catholic Scriptures, for neither in early days nor in our own has any Church writer made use of their testimony. In the course of my narrative I shall take care to indicate in each period which of the Church writers of the time used the various disputed books; their comments on the canonical and recognized Scriptures; and their remarks about the other sort.

These then are the works attributed to Peter, of which I have recognized only one epistle as authentic and accepted by the early fathers. Paul on the other hand was obviously and unmistakably the author of the fourteen epistles, but we must not shut our eyes to the fact that some authorities have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, pointing out that the Roman Church denies that it is the work of Paul: what our predecessors have said about it I will quote at the proper time. As for the ‘Acts’ attributed to him, no one has ever suggested to me that they are genuine.

As the same apostle, in the salutations that conclude the Epistle to the Romans, has referred among others to Hermas, the reputed author of the ‘Shepherd’, it is to be noted that this, too, has been rejected by some authorities and therefore cannot be placed among the accepted books. Others, however, have judged it indispensable, especially to those in need of elementary instruction. Hence we know that it has been used before now in public worship, and some of the earliest writers made use of it, as I have discovered.

4. That by his preaching to the Gentiles Paul had laid the foundations of the churches from Jerusalem by a roundabout route as far as Illyricum is obvious from his own words and from Luke’s account in the Acts. Similarly, from Peter’s language we can gather the names of the provinces in which he preached the gospel of Christ to the circumcised, proclaiming the message of the New Covenant. It is clearly stated in the epistle which, as I said, is accepted as his, in which he writes to the Hebrews of the Dispersion in Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. But how many of them and which ones became genuine enthusiasts, and were judged fit to shepherd the churches founded by the apostles, is not easy to determine, except for those who names can be extracted from the statements of Paul. For he had innumerable fellow-workers or – as he himself called them – fellow-soldiers.¹ Most of these he has honoured with an imperishable memory, paying them constant tribute in his own letters. Again Luke in the Acts, in listing Paul’s disciples, mentions them by name. We may instance Timothy, stated to have been the first bishop appointed to the see of Ephesus, as was Titus to the churches of Crete.

Luke, by birth an Antiochene and by profession a physician, was for long periods a companion of Paul and was closely associated with the other apostles as well. So he has left us examples of the art of healing souls which he learnt from them in two divinely inspired books, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The former, he declares, he wrote in accordance with the information he received from those who from the first had been eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, information which, he adds, he had followed in its entirety from the first.² The latter he composed not this time from hearsay but from the evidence of his own eyes. It is actually suggested that Paul was in the habit of referring to Luke’s gospel whenever he said, as if writing of some Gospel of his own: ‘According to my gospel.’³

Of his other followers, Paul informs us that Crescens had set out for Gaul.⁴ Linus, who is mentioned in the Second Epistle to Timothy as being with Paul in Rome, as stated above was the first after Peter to be appointed Bishop of Rome. Clement again, who became the third Bishop of Rome, was, as the Apostle himself testifies, Paul’s fellow-worker and fellow-combatant.⁵ Besides these there was the Areopagite, Dionysius by name, who was, as Luke related in the Acts, the first convert after Paul’s address to the Athenians in the Areopagus.⁶ He became the first Bishop of Athens, a fact recorded by a very early writer, another Dionysius, pastor of the see of Corinth. As we go on our way I shall take the opportunity to set out the details of the chronological sequence from the apostles. For the moment I had better proceed to the next stage in the story.

The final siege of the Jews after Christ: the crushing weight of famine

5. When Nero had been master of the empire for thirteen years, the business of Galba and Otho occupied a year and a half; and then Vespasian, after his dazzling success in the campaigns against the Jews, was proclaimed emperor while still in Judaea, after being hailed as Imperator by the armies there. He at once set out for Rome, entrusting the war against the Jews to his son Titus.

After the Ascension of our Saviour, the Jews had followed up their crime against Him by devising plot after plot against His disciples. First they stoned Stephen to death; then James the son of Zebedee and brother of John was beheaded; and finally James, the first after our Saviour’s Ascension to be raised to the bishop’s throne there, lost his life in the way described, while the remaining apostles, in constant danger from murderous plots, were driven out of Judaea. But to teach their message they travelled into every land in the power of Christ, who had said to them: ‘Go and make disciples of all the nations in my name.’¹ Furthermore, the members of the Jersusalem church, by means of an oracle given by revelation to acceptable persons there, were ordered to leave the City before the war began and settle in a town in Peraea called Pella. To Pella those who believed in Christ migrated from Jerusalem; and as if holy men had utterly abandoned the royal metropolis of the Jews and the entire Jewish land, the judgement of God at last overtook them for their abominable crimes against Christ and His apostles, completely blotting out that wicked generation from among men.

The calamities which at that time overwhelmed the whole nation in every part of the world; the process by which the inhabitants of Judaea were driven to the limits of disaster; the thousands and thousands of men of every age who together with women and children perished by the sword, by starvation, and by countless other forms of death; the number of Jewish cities besieged and the horrors they endured – especially the terrible and worse than terrible sights that met the eyes of those who sought refuge in Jerusalem itself as an impregnable fortress; the character of the whole war and the detailed events at all its stages; the last scene of all when the Abomination of Desolation announced by the prophets was set up in the very Temple of God, once world-renowned, when it underwent utter destruction and final dissolution by fire – all this anyone who wishes can gather in precise detail from the pages of Josephus’ history.¹ I must draw particular attention to his statement that the people who flocked together from all Judaea at the time of the Passover Feast and – to use his own words – were shut up in Jerusalem as if in a prison, totalled nearly three million.² It was indeed proper that in the very week in which they had brought the Saviour and Benefactor of mankind, God’s Christ, to His Passion, they should be shut up as if in a prison and suffer the destruction that came upon them by the judgement of God.

Passing over the details of the successive disasters that befell them from the sword and in other ways, I think it necessary to mention only the miseries they suffered from starvation, so that readers of this book may have some knowledge at least of how their crime against the Christ of God a very little time later brought on them God’s vengeance.

6. Come then, pick up once more Book V of Josephus’ Histories, and go through the tragic story of what then happened.

For the wealthy it was just as dangerous to stay in the city as to leave it, for on the pretext that he was a deserter many a man was killed for the sake of his money. As the famine grew worse, the frenzy of the partisans increased with it, and every day these two terrors strengthened their grip. For as nowhere was there corn to be seen, men broke into the houses and ransacked them. If they found some, they maltreated the occupants for saying there was none; if they did not, they suspected them of having hidden it more carefully, and tortured them. Proof that they had or had not food was provided by the appearance of the unhappy wretches. If they still had flesh on their bones, they were deemed to have plenty of stores; if they were already reduced to skeletons they were passed over, for it seemed pointless to dispatch those who were certain to the of starvation before long. Many secretly exchanged their possessions for a measure of corn – wheat if they happened to be rich, barley if they were poor. Then they shut themselves up in the darkest corners of their houses, where some through extreme hunger ate their grain as it was, and others made bread, necessity and fear being the only guides. Nowhere was a table laid – they snatched the food from the fire while still uncooked, and ate like wolves.

The sight of such misery would have brought tears to the eyes, for while the strong had more than enough, the weak were in desperate straits. All human feelings, alas, yield to hunger, of which decency is always the first victim; for when hunger reigns, restraint is abandoned. Thus it was that wives robbed their husbands, children their fathers, and – most horrible of all – mothers their babes, snatching the food out of their very mouths; and when their dearest ones were dying in their arms, they did not hesitate to deprive them of the morsels that might have kept them alive. This way of satisfying their hunger did not go unnoticed: everywhere the partisans were ready to swoop even on such pickings. Wherever they saw a locked door, they concluded that those within were having a meal, and instantly bursting the door open, they rushed in and hardly stopped short of squeezing their throats to force out the morsels of food. They beat old men who held on to their crusts, and tore the hair of women who hid what was in their hands. They showed no pity for grey hairs or helpless babyhood, but picked up the children as they clung to their precious scraps and dashed them on the floor. If anyone anticipated their entry by gulping down what they hoped to seize, they felt themselves defrauded and retaliated with worse savagery still.

Terrible were the methods of torture they devised in their quest for food. They stuffed bitter vetch up the genital passages of their victims, and drove sharp stakes into their seats. Torments horrible even to think about they inflicted on people, to make them admit possession of one loaf or reveal the hiding-place of a single handful of barley. It was not that the tormentors were hungry – their actions would have been less barbarous had they sprung from necessity – but rather they were keeping their passions exercised, and laying in stores for use in the coming days. Again, when men had crawled out in the night as far as the Roman guardposts to collect wild plants and herbs, just when they thought they had got safely away from the enemy lines these marauders met them and snatched their treasures from them. Piteous entreaties and appeals to the awful Name of God could not secure the return of even a fraction of what they had collected at such risk: they were lucky to be only robbed, and not killed as well…

The Jews, unable now to leave the city, were deprived of all hope of survival. The famine became more intense, and devoured whole houses and families. The roofs were covered with women and infants too weak to stand, the streets full of old men already dead. Young men and boys, swollen with hunger, haunted the squares like ghosts and fell wherever faintness overcame them. To bury their kinsfolk was beyond the strength of the sick, and those who were fit shirked the task because of the number of the dead and uncertainty about their own fate; for many while burying others fell dead themselves, and many set out for their graves before their hour struck. In their misery no weeping or lamentation was heard; hunger stifled emotion; with dry eyes those who were slow to the watched those whose end came sooner. Deep silence enfolded the city, and a darkness burdened with death. Worse still were the bandits, who broke like tomb-robbers into the houses of the dead and stripped the bodies, snatching off their wrappings, then came out laughing. They tried the points of their swords on the corpses, and even transfixed some of those who lay helpless but still alive, to test the steel. But if any begged for a sword-thrust to end their sufferings, they contemptuously left them to die of hunger. Everyone as he breathed his last fixed his eyes on the Temple, turning his back on the partisans he was leaving alive. The latter at first ordered the dead to be buried at public expense, as they could not bear the stench; later, when this proved impossible, they threw them from the walls into the valleys. When in the course of his rounds Titus saw them choked with dead, and a putrid stream trickling from under the decomposing bodies, he groaned, and uplifting his hands called God to witness that this was not his doing…

I cannot refrain from saying what my feelings dictate. I think that if the Romans had delayed their attack on these sacrilegious ruffians, either the ground would have opened and swallowed up the city, or a flood would have overwhelmed it, or lightning would have destroyed it like Sodom. For it produced a generation far more godless than those who perished thus, a generation whose mad folly involved the nation in ruin.¹

In Book VI he writes:

In the city famine raged, its victims dropping dead in countless numbers, and the horrors were unspeakable. In every home, if the shadow of something to eat was anywhere detected, war broke out and the best of friends came to grips with each other, snatching away the wretchedest means of support. Not even the dying were believed to be in want; at their last gasp they were searched by the bandits, in case some of them had food inside their clothes and were feigning death. Open-mouthed with hunger like mad dogs, the desperadoes stumbled and staggered along, hammering at the doors like drunken men, and in their helpless state breaking into the same houses two or three times in a single hour. Necessity made them put their teeth in everything; things not even the filthiest of dumb animals would look at, they picked up and brought themselves to swallow. In the end they actually devoured belts and shoes, and stripped off the leather from their shields and chewed it. Some tried to live on scraps of old hay, for there were people who collected the stalks and sold a tiny bunch for four Attic drachmas!

But why should I speak of the inanimate things that hunger made them shameless enough to eat? I am now going to relate a deed for which there is no parallel in the annals of Greece or any other country, a deed horrible to speak of and incredible to hear. For myself I am so anxious that future ages should not suspect me of grotesque inventions that I would gladly have passed over this calamity in silence, had there not been countless witnesses of my own generation to bear me out; and besides, my country would have little reason to thank me if I drew a veil over the miseries that were so real to her.

There was a woman, Mary the daughter of Eleazar, who lived east of Jordan in the village of Bathezor (‘House of Hyssop’). She was of good family and very rich, and had fled with the rest of the population to Jerusalem, where she shared in the horrors of the siege. Most of the property that she had packed up and moved from Peraea into the city had been plundered by the party chiefs; the remnants of her treasures, and any food she had managed to obtain, were being carried off in daily raids by their henchmen. The wretched woman was filled with uncontrollable fury, and let loose a stream of abuse and curses that enraged the looters against her. When neither resentment nor pity caused anyone to kill her, and she grew tired of finding food for others – and whichever way she turned it was almost impossible to find – and while hunger was eating her heart out and rage was consuming her still faster, she yielded to the suggestions of fury and necessity, and in defiance of all natural feeling laid hands on her own child, a babe at the breast. ‘Poor little mite!’ she cried. ‘In war, famine, and civil strife, why do I keep you alive? With the Romans there is only slavery, even if we are alive when they come; but famine is forestalling slavery, and the partisans are crueller than either. Come, you must be food for me, to the partisans an avenging spirit, and to the world a tale, the only thing left to fill up the measure of Jewish misery.’ As she spoke she killed her son, then roasted him and ate one half, concealing and saving up the rest.

At once the partisans appeared, and sniffing the unholy smell, threatened that if she did not produce what she had prepared they would kill her on the spot. She replied that she had kept a fine helping for them, and uncovered what was left of her child. They, overcome with instant horror and amazement, could not take their eyes off the sight. But she went on: ‘This child is my own, and the deed is mine too. Help yourselves: I have had my share. Don’t be softer than a woman or more tender-hearted than a mother! But if you are squeamish, and don’t approve of my sacrifice – well, I have eaten half, so you may as well leave me the rest.’ That was the last straw, and they went away quivering. They had never before shrunk from anything, and did not much like giving up even this food to the mother. From that moment the entire city could think of nothing else but this abomination; everyone saw the tragedy before his own eyes, and shuddered as if the crime was his. The one desire of the starving was for death: how they envied those who had gone before seeing or hearing of these appalling horrors!¹

Christ’s predictions: warnings before the war

7. Such was the reward of the Jews’ iniquitous and wicked treatment of God’s Christ. It is worth while to set alongside it our Saviour’s absolutely true prediction, in which He reveals those very things in this prophecy:

Alas for those who have a child unborn or at the breast in those days! Pray that your flight may not take place in winter or on a sabbath. For then there will be great distress, such as there has never been from the beginning of the world till now, and will never be again.²

In computing the whole number of those who lost their lives, the historian says that famine and the sword destroyed 1,100,000 persons; that those who had taken part in sedition and terrorism informed against each other after the capture of the city and were put to death; that the tallest and handsomest of the youngsters were kept for the triumphal procession; that of the rest, those over seventeen were put in irons and sent to hard labour in Egypt, and still more were distributed among the provinces to perish in the theatres by sword or by wild beasts, while those under seventeen were carried off captive and sold, the number of these alone reaching 90,000.¹

These things happened in the second year of Vespasian’s reign, in exact accordance with the prophetic predictions of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who by divine power had foreseen them as though already present, and wept and mourned over them, as we learn from the holy evangelists, who have set down His very words. On one occasion He said, as if to Jerusalem herself:

If only you, even you, had known today the way to your peace! But now it has been hidden from your sight. For a time will come upon you when your enemies will throw up an earthwork round you and encircle you and hem you in on every side, and bring to the ground both you and your children.²

On another occasion, with the people in mind, He said:

For there will be great distress in the land, and indignation against this people: they will fall at the point of the sword, and they will be carried into captivity in every heathen land; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by heathen, till the day of the heathen is over.³

And again:

When you see Jersualem encircled by armies, then you may be sure that her desolation has drawn near.⁴

Anyone who compared our Saviour’s words with the rest of the historian’s account of the whole war could not fail to be astonished, and to acknowledge as divine and utterly marvellous the foreknowledge revealed by our Saviour’s prediction.

After the Saviour’s Passion, and the cries with which the Jewish mob clamoured for the reprieve of the bandit and murderer and begged that the Author of Life should be removed from them,¹ disaster befell the entire nation. There is no need to add anything to the historical records. But it would be right to mention, too, certain facts which bring home the beneficence of all-gracious Providence, which for forty years after their crime against Christ delayed their destruction. All that time most of the apostles and disciples, including James himself, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, known as the Lord’s brother, were still alive, and by remaining in the city furnished the place with an impregnable bulwark. For the overruling power of God was still patient, in the hope that at last they might repent of their misdeeds and obtain pardon and salvation; and besides this wonderful patience, it granted miraculous warnings from God of what would happen to them if they did not repent. These occurrences were thought worthy of mention by the historian whom I have been quoting, and I cannot do better than make them available to readers of this work.

8. Turn then to Book VI of the Histories, and read what he says:

The unhappy people were beguiled at that stage by cheats and false messengers of God, while the unmistakable portents that foreshadowed the coming desolation they treated with indifference and incredulity, disregarding God’s warnings as if they were moonstruck, blind, and senseless. First a star stood over the city, very like a broadsword, and a comet that remained a whole year. Then before the revolt and the movement to war, while the people were assembling for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the 8th of Xanthicus at three in the morning so bright a light shone round the Altar and the Sanctuary that it might have been midday. This lasted half an hour. The inexperienced took it for a good omen, but the sacred scribes at once gave the true interpretation, before the events. During the same feast a cow brought by the high priest to be sacrificed gave birth to a lamb in the middle of the Temple courts, while at midnight it was observed that the east gate of the inner Sanctuary had opened of its own accord – a gate made of bronze, and so solid that every evening twenty strong men were required to shut it, fastened with iron-bound bars and secured by bolts which went down a long way.

A few days after the Feast, on the 21st of Artemisius, a supernatural apparition was seen, too amazing to be believed. What I have to relate would have been dismissed as an invention had it not been vouched for by eyewitnesses and followed by disasters that bore out the signs. Before sunset there were seen in the sky over the whole country chariots and regiments in arms speeding through the clouds and encircling the towns. Again, at the Feast of Pentecost, when the priests had gone into the Temple at night to perform the usual ceremonies, they declared that they were aware, first of a violent movement and a loud crash, then of a concerted cry: ‘Let us go hence!’

An incident more alarming still had occurred four years before the war, at a time of exceptional peace and prosperity for the city. One Jesus son of Ananias, a very ordinary yokel, came to the feast at which every Jew is expected to set up a tabernacle for God. As he stood in the Temple he suddenly began to shout: ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the Sanctuary, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against the whole people!’ Day and night he uttered the cry as he went through the streets. Some of the more prominent citizens, very annoyed at these ominous words, laid hold of the fellow and beat him savagely. Without saying a word in his own defence or for the private information of his persecutors, he persisted in shouting the same warning as before. The Jewish authorities, rightly concluding that some supernatural force was responsible for the man’s behaviour, took him before the Roman procurator. There, though scourged till his flesh hung in ribbons, he neither begged for mercy nor shed a tear, but lowering his voice to the most mournful of tones answered every blow with: ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’¹

A still more astonishing story follows a paragraph later, where it is stated that an oracle was found in their sacred writings to the effect that at that time a man from their country would become monarch of the whole world: this oracle the historian himself believed to have been fulfilled in Vespasian.² But Vespasian did not reign over the entire world, but only the part under Roman rule: it would be more justly applied to Christ, to whom the Father had said,

Ask of me, and I will give you the heathen world for your inheritance, And for your possession the ends of the earth.¹

At that very time it was true of His apostles that

Their speech went out to the whole earth,

And their words to the ends of the world.²

Josephus and the writings that he left: his allusions to the sacred books

9. Besides all this it is well that the origin and ancestry of Josephus himself, who has provided so much material for this present history, should be generally known. He furnishes this information himself:

I, Josephus, son of Matthias, am a priest from Jerusalem; in the early stages I myself fought against the Romans, and of the later events I was an unwilling witness.³

Of the Jews at that time he was the most famous, not only among his fellow-countrymen but among the Romans too, so that he was honoured with the erection of a statue in the city of Rome, and the labours of his pen found a place in the Library. He has set out the whole of Ancient Jewish History⁴ in twenty books, and the story of the Roman war of his own day in seven.⁵ The latter work he committed not only to Greek but also to his native language, as he himself testifies⁶ – and in view of his general truthfulness, we may accept this. Two other worth-while books of his are extant, entitled The Antiquity of the Jews,⁷ his reply to Apion the grammarian, who had recently published an attack on the Jews, and to others who had made similar attempts to misrepresent the ancestral customs of the Jewish people. In the first of these he gives the number of the canonical scriptures forming the Old Testament, as it is called, showing which of them are undisputed among the Hebrews as being backed by ancient tradition:

10. We do not have vast numbers of books, discordant and conflicting, but only twenty-two, containing the record of all time and with reason believed to be divine. Of these five are books of Moses, containing the Laws and the tradition of the origin of mankind up to his death. This period covers nearly 3,000 years. From Moses’ death to that of Artaxerxes, who followed Xerxes as King of Persia, the prophets after Moses recorded the events of their own time in thirteen books. The remaining four contain hymns to God and precepts for human conduct. From Artaxerxes to the present day the whole story has been written down, but does not command the same belief as the earlier narrative because there was not an unbroken succession of prophets. It is evident from our actions what is our attitude to our own scriptures; for though so many centuries have gone by, no one has presumed to add, to take away, or alter anything in them, but it is innate in every Jew from the day of his birth to regard them as the ordinances of God, to abide in them, and if need to be die for them gladly.¹

This quotation from the historian is of obvious value. He produced yet another work of considerable merit, The Supremacy of Reason, entitled Maccabees by some, because it deals with the struggles of those Hebrews who, as related in the books bearing the same name Maccabees, fought so manfully for the worship of Almighty God. And at the end of Book XX of Antiquities he announces that he has decided to write a work in four books on the traditional beliefs of the Jews about God and His nature, and about the reasons why the Laws permit certain things and forbid others.² Other books, already published, are also referred to in his surviving works.

Finally, it would be appropriate to reproduce the words attached to the end of Antiquities and so confirm the testimony of the passages I have borrowed from him. In impugning the historical accuracy of Justus of Tiberias, who had attempted to record the events of the same period as himself, after bringing many other charges against him he adds the following:

I had no such apprehensions as yourself with regard to what I myself had written: I submitted the work to the emperors themselves.¹ when the events had hardly passed out of sight. For, conscious that I had observed absolute truthfulness in my account, I expected to receive testimony to my accuracy, and was not disappointed. I also submitted my history to many others, some of whom had actually seen service in the war, including King Agrippa² and several of his relations. For the Emperor Titus was so anxious that from my work alone should men derive their knowledge of the events, that he wrote with his own hand an order for its publication, while King Agrippa wrote sixty-two letters testifying to the truthfulness of my account.³

Two of these letters he quotes. And there we may leave Josephus and go on to the next stage.

11. After the martyrdom of James and the capture of Jerusalem which instantly followed, there is a firm tradition that those of the apostles and disciples of the Lord who were still alive assembled from all parts together with those who, humanly speaking, were kinsmen of the Lord – for most of them were still living. Then they all discussed together whom they should choose as a fit person to succeed James, and voted unanimously that Symeon, son of the Clopas mentioned in the gospel narrative,⁴ was a fit person to occupy the throne of the Jerusalem see. He was, so it is said, a cousin of the Saviour, for Hegesippus tells us that Clopas was Joseph’s brother.

12. Hegesippus also records that after the capture of Jerusalem Vespasian issued an order that, to ensure that no member of the royal house should be left among the Jews, all descendants of David should be ferreted out; and that this resulted in a further widespread persecution of the Jews.

13. When Vespasian had reigned for ten years he was succeeded as emperor by his son Titus. In the second year of Titus’ reign Linus, Bishop of Rome, after holding his office for twelve years yielded it to Anencletus.

Titus was succeeded by his brother Domitian after reigning for two years and as many months.

14. In the fourth year of Domitian the first Bishop of Alexandria, Annianus, after completing twenty-two years, passed away, and was succeeded by the second, Avilus.

15. In the twelfth year of the same principate Anencletus, after twelve years as Bishop of Rome, was succeeded by Clement, who is described by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Philippians as a fellow-worker:

With Clement and the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life.¹

16. Clement has left us one recognized epistle, long and wonderful, which he composed in the name of the church at Rome and sent to the church at Corinth, where dissension had recently occurred. I have evidence that in many churches this epistle was read aloud to the assembled worshippers in early days, as it is in our own. That it was in Clement’s time that the dissension at Corinth broke out is plain from the testimony of Hegesippus.

Domitian’s persecution: John the apostle and our Saviour’s relatives

17. Many were the victims of Domitian’s appalling cruelty. At Rome great numbers of men distinguished by birth and attainments were for no reason at all banished from the country and their property confiscated. Finally, he showed himself the successor of Nero in enmity and hostility to God. He was, in fact, the second to organize persecution against us, though his father Vespasian had had no mischievous designs against us.

18. There is ample evidence that at that time the apostle and evangelist John was still alive, and because of his testimony to the word of God was sentenced to confinement on the island of Patmos. Writing about the number of the name given to antichrist in what is called the Revelation of John,¹ Irenaeus has this to say about John in Book V of his Against Heresies:

Had there been any need for his name to be openly announced at the present time, it would have been stated by the one who saw the actual revelation. For it was seen not a long time back, but almost in my own lifetime, at the end of Domitian’s reign.²

Indeed, so brightly shone at that time the teaching of our faith that even historians who accepted none of our beliefs unhesitatingly recorded in their pages both the persecution and the martyrdoms to which it led. They also indicated the precise date, noting that in the fifteenth year of Domitian Flavia Domitilla, who was a niece of Flavius Clemens, one of the consuls at Rome that year, was with many others, because of the testimony to Christ, taken to the island of Pontia as a punishment.

19. The same emperor ordered the execution of all who were of David’s line, and there is an old and firm tradition that a group of heretics accused the descendants of Jude – the brother, humanly speaking, of the Saviour – on the ground that they were of David’s line and related to Christ Himself. This is stated by Hegesippus in so many words:

20. And there still survived of the Lord’s family the grandsons of Jude, who was said to be His brother, humanly speaking. These were informed against as being of David’s line, and brought by the evocatus before Domitian Caesar, who was as afraid of the advent of Christ as Herod had been.³ Domitian asked them whether they were descended from David, and they admitted it. Then he asked them what property they owned and what funds they had at their disposal. They replied that they had only 9,000 denarii between them, half belonging to each; this, they said, was not available in cash, but was the estimated value of only thirty-nine plethra of land, from which they raised the money to pay their taxes and the wherewithal to support themselves by their own toil.

Then, the writer continues, they showed him their hands, putting forward as proof of their toil the hardness of their bodies and the calluses impressed on their hands by incessant labour. When asked about Christ and His Kingdom – what it was like, and where and when it would appear – they explained that it was not of this world or anywhere on earth but angelic and in heaven, and would be established at the end of the world, when He would come in glory to judge the quick and the dead and give every man payment according to his conduct. On hearing this, Domitian found no fault with them, but depising them as beneath his notice let them go free and issued orders terminating the persecution of the Church. On their release they became leaders of the churches, both because they had borne testimony and because they were of the Lord’s family; and thanks to the establishment of peace they lived on into Trajan’s time.

So much we learn from Hegesippus. Tertullian, again, has this to say about Domitian:

A similar attempt had once been made by Domitian, who almost equalled Nero in cruelty; but – I suppose because he had some common sense – he very soon stopped, even recalling those he had banished.¹

After fifteen years of Domitian’s rule Nerva succeeded to the throne. By vote of the Roman senate Domitian’s honours were removed, and those unjustly banished returned to their homes and had their property restored to them. This is noted by the chroniclers of the period. At that time too the apostle John, after his exile on the island, resumed residence at Ephesus, as early Christain tradition records.

Bishops of Alexandria and Antioch

21. When Nerva had reigned a little more than a year he was succeeded by Trajan. It was in his first year that Avilius, after heading the church of Alexandria for thirteen years, was succeeded by Ccrdo: he was the third of the see, Annianus having been the first. At that time Clement was still head of the Roman community, occupying in the same way the third place among the bishops who followed Paul and Peter. Linus was the first and Anencletus the second.

22. At Antioch, where Evodius had been the first bishop, Ignatius was becoming famous at this time; his contemporary Symeon was similarly the next after our Saviour’s brother to be in charge of the church at Jerusalem.

A story about John the apostle

23. In Asia, moreover, there still remained alive the one whom Jesus loved, apostle and evangelist alike, John, who had directed the churches there since his return from exile on the island, following Domitian’s death. That he survived so long is proved by the evidence of two witnesses who could hardly be doubted, ambassadors as they were of the orthodoxy of the Church – Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria. In Book II of his Against Heresies, Irenaeus writes:

All the clergy who in Asia came in contact with John, the Lord’s disciple, testify that John taught the truth to them; for he remained with them till Trajan’s time.¹

In Book III of the same work he says the same thing:

The church at Ephesus was founded by Paul, and John remained there till Trajan’s time; so she is a true witness of what the apostles taught.²

Clement, in addition to indicating the date, adds a story that should be familiar to all who like to hear what is noble and helpful. It will be found in the short work entitled The Rich Man Who Finds Salvation. Turn up the passage, and read what he writes:

Listen to a tale that is not just a tale but a true account of John the apostle, handed down and carefully remembered. When the tyrant was dead, and John had moved from the island of Patmos to Ephesus, he used to go when asked to the neighbouring districts of the Gentile peoples, sometimes to appoint bishops, sometimes to organize whole churches, sometimes to ordain one person of those pointed out by the Spirit. So it happened that he arrived at a city not far off, named by some,¹ and after settling the various problems of the brethren, he finally looked at the bishop already appointed, and indicating a youngster he had noticed, of excellent physique, attractive appearance, and ardent spirit, he said: ‘I leave this young man in your keeping, with all earnestness, in the presence of the Church and Christ as my witness.’ When the bishop accepted him and promised everything, John addressed the same appeal and adjuration to him a second time.

He then returned to Ephesus, and the cleric took home the youngster entrusted to his care, brought him up, kept him in his company, looked after him, and finally gave him the grace of baptism. After this he relaxed his constant care and watchfulness, having put upon him the seal of the Lord as the perfect protection. But the youngster snatched at liberty too soon, and was led sadly astray by others of his own age who were idle, dissolute, and evil-livers. First they led him on by expensive entertainments; then they took him with them when they went out at night to commit robbery; then they urged him to take part in even greater crimes. Little by little he fell into their ways; and like a hard-mouthed powerful horse he dashed off the straight road, and taking the bit between his teeth rushed down the precipice the more violently because of his immense vitality. Completely renouncing God’s salvation, he was no longer content with petty offences, but, as his life was already in ruins, he decided to commit a major crime and suffer the same fate as the others. He took these same young renegades and formed them into a gang of bandits of which his was the master mind, surpassing them all in violence, cruelty, and bloodthirstiness.

Time went by, and some necessity having arisen, John was asked to pay another visit. When he had dealt with the business for which he had come, he said: ‘Come now, bishop, pay me back the deposit which Christ and I left in your keeping, in the presence of the Church over which you preside as my witness.’ At first the bishop was taken aback, thinking that he was being dunned for money he had never received. He could neither comply with a demand for what he did not possess, nor refuse to comply with John’s request. But when John said ‘It is the young man I am asking for, and the soul of our brother’, the old man sighed deeply and shed a tear.

‘He is dead.’

‘How did he die?’

‘He is dead to God: he turned out wicked and profligate, in short, a bandit; and now, instead of the Church, he has taken to the mountain with an armed gang of men like himself.’

The apostle rent his garment, groaned aloud, and beat his head. ‘A fine guardian,’ he cried, ‘I left of our brother’s soul! However, let me have a horse immediately, and someone to show me the way.’ He galloped off from the church, then and there, just as he was. When he arrived at the place, and was seized by the bandits’ sentry-group, he made no attempt to escape and asked no mercy, but shouted: ‘This is what I have come for:¹ take me to your leader.’ For the time being the young man waited, armed as he was; but as John approached he recognized him, and filled with shame, turned to flee. But John ran after him as hard as he could, forgetting his years and calling out: ‘Why do you run away from me, child – from your own father, unarmed and very old? Be sorry for me, child, not afraid of me. You still have hopes of life. I will account to Christ for you. If need be, I will gladly suffer your death, as the Lord suffered death for us; to save you I will give my own life. Stop! believe! Christ sent me.’

When he heard this, the young man stopped and stood with his eyes on the ground; then he threw down his weapons; then he trembled and began to weep bitterly. When the old man came up he flung his arms round him, pleading for himself with groans as best he could, and baptized a second time with his tears, but keeping his right hand out of sight. But John solemnly pledged his word that he had found pardon for him from the Saviour: he prayed, knelt down, and kissed that very hand as being cleansed by his repentance. Then he brought him back to the church, interceded for him with many prayers, shared with him the ordeal of continuous fasting, brought his mind under control by all the enchanting power of words, and did not leave him, we are told, till he had restored him to the Church, giving a perfect example of true repentance and a perfect proof of regeneration, the trophy of a visible resurrection.²

This story from Clement I have included both for its historical interest and for the benefit of future readers.

The order of the gospels

24. Now let me indicate the unquestioned writings of this apostle. Obviously his gospel, recognized as it is by all the churches in the world, must first be acknowledged. That the early fathers had good reason to assign it the fourth place after the other three can easily be seen. Those inspired and wonderful men, Christ’s apostles, had completely purified their lives and cultivated every spiritual virtue, but their speech was that of every day. The divine wonderworking power bestowed on them by the Saviour filled them with confidence; and having neither the ability nor the desire to present the teachings of the Master with rhetorical subtlety or literary skill, they relied only on demonstrating the divine Spirit working with them, and on the miraculous power of Christ fully operative in them.¹ Thus they proclaimed the knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven through the whole world, giving very little thought to the business of writing books. The reason for this practice was the ever-present help of a greater, superhuman ministry. We may instance Paul, who, though he surpassed all others in the marshalling of his arguments and in the abundance of his ideas, committed to writing nothing but his very short epistles; and yet he had countless unutterable things to say, for he had reached the vision of the third heaven, he had been caught up to the divine paradise itself, and had been privileged to hear there unspeakable words.²

Similar experiences were enjoyed by the rest of our Saviour’s pupils – the twelve apostles, the seventy disciples, and countless others besides. Yet of them all Matthew and John alone have left us memoirs of the Lord’s doings, and there is a firm tradition that they took to writing of necessity. Matthew had begun by preaching to Hebrews; and when he made up his mind to go to others too, he committed his own gospel to writing in his native tongue, so that for those with whom he was no longer present the gap left by his departure was filled by what he wrote. And when Mark and Luke had now published their gospels, John, we are told, who hitherto had relied entirely on the spoken word, finally took to writing for the following reason. The three gospels already written were in general circulation and copies had come into John’s hands. He welcomed them, we are told, and confirmed their accuracy, but remarked that the narrative only lacked the story of what Christ had done first of all at the beginning of His mission.

This tradition is undoubtedly true. Anyone can see that the three evangelists have recorded the doings of the Saviour for only one year, following the consignment of John the Baptist to prison, and that they indicated this very fact at the beginning of their narrative. After the forty days’ fast and the temptation that followed Matthew shows clearly the period covered by his narrative when he says: ‘Hearing that John had been arrested, He withdrew from Judaea into Galilee.’¹ In the same way, Mark says: ‘After the arrest of John, Jesus went into Galilee.² Luke too, before beginning the acts of Jesus, makes a similar observation, saying that Herod added one more to his other crimes by shutting up John in gaol.³

We are told, then, that for this reason the apostle John was urged to record in his gospel the period which the earlier evangelists had passed over in silence and the things done during that period by the Saviour, i.e. all that happened before the Baptist’s imprisonment; that this is indicated, first by his words ‘Thus did Jesus begin His miracles’,⁴ and later by his mentioning the Baptist, in the middle of his account of Jesus’s doings, as then still baptizing at Aenon near Salim; and that he makes this plainer when he adds ‘for John had not yet been thrown into gaol’.⁵

Thus John in his gospel narrative records what Christ did when the Baptist had not yet been thrown into gaol, while the other three evangelists describe what happened after the Baptist’s consignment to prison. Once this is grasped, there no longer appears to be a discrepancy between the gospels, because John’s deals with the early stages of Christ’s career and the others cover the last period of His story; and it seems natural that as the genealogy of our Saviour as a man had already been set out by Matthew and Luke, John should pass it over in silence and begin with the proclamation of His divinity since the Holy Spirit had reserved this for him, as the greatest of the four.

This is all that I propose to say about the composition of John’s gospel: the origin of Mark’s has already been explained. Luke’s work begins with a preface in which the author himself explains the reason for its composition. Many others had somewhat hastily undertaken to compile an account of things of which he himself was fully assured;¹ so, feeling it his duty to free us from doubts as to our attitude to the others, he furnished in his own gospel an authentic account of the events of which, thanks to his association and intercourse with Paul and his conversations with the other apostles, he had learnt the undoubted truth.² This is how I see the matter: at a more appropriate moment I shall endeavour to show, by quoting early writers, what others have said about it.

Of John’s writings, besides the gospel, the first of the epistles had been accepted as unquestionably his by scholars both of the present and of a much earlier period: the other two are disputed. As to the Revelation, the views of most people to this day are evenly divided. At the appropriate moment, the evidence of early writers shall clear up this matter too.

Writings accepted as sacred, and those not accepted

25. It will be well, at this point, to classify the New Testament writings already referred to. We must, of course, put first the holy quartet of the gospels, followed by the Acts of the Apostles. The next place in the list goes to Paul’s epistles, and after them we must recognize the epistle called 1 John; likewise 1 Peter. To these may be added, if it is thought proper, the Revelation of John, the arguments about which I shall set out when the time comes. These are classed as Recognized Books. Those that are disputed, yet familiar to most, include the epistles known as James, Jude, and 2 Peter, and those called 2 and 3 John, the work either of the evangelist or of someone else with the same name.

Among Spurious Books must be placed the ‘Acts’ of Paul, the ‘Shepherd’, and the ‘Revelation of Peter’; also the alleged ‘Epistle of Barnabas’, and the ‘Teachings of the Apostles’, together with the Revelation of John, if this seems the right place for it: as I said before, some reject it, others include it among the Recognized Books. Moreover, some have found a place in the list for the ‘Gospel of Hebrews’, a book which has a special appeal for those Hebrews who have accepted Christ. These would all be classed with the Disputed Books, but I have been obliged to list the latter separately, distinguishing those writings which according to the tradition of the Church are true, genuine, and recognized, from those in a different category, not canonical but disputed, yet familiar to most churchmen; for we must not confuse these with the writings published by heretics under the name of the apostles, as containing either Gospels of Peter, Thomas, Matthias, and several others besides these, or Acts of Andrew, John, and other apostles. To none of these has any churchman of any generation ever seen fit to refer in his writings. Again, nothing could be farther from apostolic usage than the type of phraseology employed, while the ideas and implications of their contents are so irreconcilable with true orthodoxy that they stand revealed as the forgeries of heretics. It follows that so far from being classed even among Spurious Books, they must be thrown out as impious and beyond the pale.

Menander the impostor

26. Let us now return to the course of our story. Simon the Magus was succeeded by Menander, a second tool of the devil’s ingenuity as bad as his predecessor, as he showed by his conduct. He too was a Samaritan, and having risen to the same heights of imposture as his master, he poured out a stream of still more marvellous tales. He actually claimed to be the saviour sent down from somewhere aloft to save mankind from invisible aeons, and taught that there was no way by which a man could get the better even of the angels who made the world, unless he had first been taken through the magical skills transmitted by himself and the baptism which he bestowed: those who were admitted to this baptism would share in everlasting immortality in this present world, no longer subject to death but destined to continue here for ever, ageless and immortal. All this is clearly stated in the writings of Irenaeus. Justin, too, follows up his comments on Simon with an account of his successor:

Another Samaritan, called Menander, from the village of Caparattaea, became a disciple of Simon and like him was driven mad by the demons. It is known that he arrived in Antioch and deluded many by magical trickery. He even persuaded his followers that they would not die: and there are still some who on the strength of his assertion maintain this belief.¹

It was certainly characteristic of the devil’s ingenuity to make use of such impostors, who usurped the name of Christian, in his determination to misrepresent in the interests of magic the great mystery of religion,² and to make a mockery of the Church’s teaching on the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead. But those who have entitled these men ‘saviours’ have fallen from the true hope.

The Ebionite sect: the heresies of Cerinthus and Nicolaus

27. There were others whom the evil demon, unable to shake their devotion to the Christ of God, caught in a different trap and made his own. Ebionites they were appropriately named by the first Christians, in view of the poor and mean opinions they held about Christ. They regarded Him as plain and ordinary, a man esteemed as righteous through growth³ of character and nothing more, the child of a normal union between a man and Mary; and they held that they must observe every detail of the Law – by faith in Christ alone, and a life built upon that faith, they would never win salvation.

A second group went by the same name, but escaped the outrageous absurdity of the first. They did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and the Holy Spirit, but nevertheless shared their refusal to acknowledge His pre-existence as God the Word and Wisdom. Thus the impious doctrine of the others was their undoing also, especially as they placed equal emphasis on the outward observance of the Law. They held that the epistles of the Apostle ought to be rejected altogether, calling him a renegade from the Law; and using only the ‘Gospel of the Hebrews’, they treated the rest with scant respect. Like the others, they observed the Sabbath and the whole Jewish system; yet on the Lord’s Day they celebrated rites similar to our own in memory of the Saviour’s resurrection. It is then because of such practices that they have been dubbed with their present name: the name of Ebionites hints at the poverty of their intelligence, for this is the way in which a poor man is referred to by the Hebrews.

28. At the time under discussion, tradition tells us, another heretical sect was founded by Cerinthus. Gaius, whose words I quoted earlier, in the Dialogue attributed to him writes this about him:

Then there is Cerinthus, who by revelations purporting to have been written by a great apostle presents us with tales of wonder falsely alleged to have been shown to him by angels. He declares that after the Resurrection the Kingdom of Christ will be on earth, and that carnal humanity will dwell in Jerusalem, once more enslaved to lusts and pleasures.¹ And in his enmity towards the Scriptures of God, and his anxiety to lead men astray, he foretells a period of a thousand years given up to wedding festivities.

Dionysius again, who held the bishopric of the Alexandrian see in my own time, in Book II of his Promises makes certain statements about the Revelation of John on the basis of very ancient tradition. He then refers to Cerinthus in the following terms.

Cerinthus: the founder of a sect called Cerinthian after him, who wished to attach a name commanding respect to his own creation. This, they say, was the doctrine he taught – that Christ’s Kingdom would be on earth: and the things he lusted after himself, being the slave of his body and sensual through and through, filled the heaven of his dreams – unlimited indulgence in gluttony and lechery at banquets, drinking-bouts, and wedding-feasts, or (to call these by what he thought more respectable names) festivals, sacrifices, and the immolation of victims.

That is how Dionysius put it. Irenaeus in Book I of his Against Heresies set out some of his more revolting errors, and in Book III has placed on record a memorable story. He states on the authority of Polycarp that one day John the apostle went into a bath-house to take a bath, but when he found that Cerinthus was inside he leapt from the spot and ran for the door, as he could not endure to be under the same roof. He urged his companions to do the same, calling out: ‘Let us get out of here, for fear the place falls in, now that Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside.’

29. In their day, too, the very short-lived sect of the Nicolaitans came into existence. It is mentioned in the Revelation of John.¹ These sectaries laid claim to Nicolaus, who like Stephen was one of the deacons appointed by the apostles to assist those in want.²Clement of Alexandria in Book III of his Miscellanies gives this account of him:

This man, we are told, had an attractive young wife. After the Saviour’s Ascension the apostles accused him of jealousy, so he brought his wife forward and said that anyone who wished might have her. This action, we are told, followed from the injunction ‘the flesh must be treated with contempt’; and by following example and precept crudely and unquestioningly the members of the sect do in fact practise utter promiscuity. But my own information is that Nicolaus had no relations with any woman but his wife; and that, of his children, his daughters remained unmarried till the end of their days and his son’s chastity was never in doubt. Such being the case, his bringing the wife whom he loved so jealously into the midst of the apostles was the renunciation of desire, and it was mastery of the pleasures so eagerly sought that taught him the rule ‘treat the flesh with contempt’. For in obedience to the Saviour’s command, I imagine, he had no wish to serve two masters, Pleasure and Lord. It is believed that Matthias also taught this, that we must fight against the flesh and treat it with contempt, never yielding to it for pleasure’s sake, but must nourish the soul through faith and knowledge.¹

So much for those who during that period endeavoured to twist the truth, only to be extinguished completely, in less time than it takes to tell.

Apostles who were married men

30. Clement, whose words we have just been reading, goes on from the passage I have quoted to rebut those who deprecated marriage, by listing the apostles known to have been married men. He says:

Or will they condemn even the apostles? For Peter and Philip had families, and Philip gave his daughters in marriage, while Paul himself does not hestiate in one of his epistles to address his yoke-fellow,² whom he did not take round with him³ for fear of hindering his ministry.⁴

While I am on the subject, I may as well quote another of Clement’s interesting stories, to be found in Book VII of his Miscellanies:

We are told that when blessed Peter saw his wife led away to death he was glad that her call had come and that she was returning home, and spoke to her in the most encouraging and comforting tones, addressing her by name: ‘My dear, remember the Lord.’ Such was the marriage of the blessed, and their consummate feeling towards their dearest.⁵

These quotations, relevant as they are to this section of my work, must suffice for the moment.

The deaths of John and Philip

31. When and how Paul and Peter died, and where after their departure from this life their mortal remains were laid, I have already explained. The date of John’s death has also been roughly fixed: the place where his mortal remains lie can be gathered from a letter of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, to Victor, Bishop of Rome. In it he refers not only to John but to Philip the apostle and Philip’s daughters as well:

In Asia great luminaries sleep who shall rise again on the last day, the day of the Lord’s advent, when He is coming with glory from heaven and shall search out all His saints – such as Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis with two of his daughters, who remained unmarried to the end of their days, while his other daughter lived in the Holy Spirit and rests in Ephesus. Again there is John, who leant back on the Lord’s breast, and who became a priest wearing the mitre, a martyr and a teacher; he too sleeps in Ephesus.

So much Polycrates tells us about their deaths. And in the Dialogue of Gaius of whom I spoke a little while ago, Proclus, with whom he was disputing, speaks thus about the deaths of Philip and his daughters, in agreement with the foregoing account:

After him there were four prophetesses at Hierapolis in Asia, daughters of Philip. Their grave is there, as is their father’s.

That is Gaius’ account. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles refers to Philip’s daughters as then living with their father at Caesarea in Judaea and endowed with the prophetic gift. His words are:

We arrived at Caesarea, where we went to the house of Philip the Evangelist, one of the Seven, and stayed with him. He had four unmarried daughters who were prophetesses.¹

In these pages I have set down all the facts that have come to my knowledge regarding the apostles and the apostolic period; the sacred writings they have left us; the books which though disputed are nevertheless constantly used in very many churches; those that are unmistakably spurious and foreign to apostolic orthodoxy. Let us now go on to the story of what followed.

The martyrdom of Symeon, Bishop of Jerusalem

32. After Nero and Domitian, under the emperor whose times I am now describing, there is a firm tradition that persecution broke out against us sporadically in one city at a time as a result of popular risings. In the course of it Symeon, son of Clopas, the second to be appointed Bishop of Jerusalem, as already stated, is known to have ended his life by martyrdom. The authority for this statement is the writer to whose history I have appealed several times already, Hegesippus. When writing of certain heretics he goes on to explain how at this time they brought an accusation against Symeon, and how after being subjected for days on end to a variety of tortures for being a Christian, to the utter amazement of the judge and his assessors, he won the prize of an end like that suffered by the Lord. But we cannot do better than listen to the writer’s own version of the story:

Some of these [heretics] charged Simon son of Clopas with being a descendant of David and a Christian; as a result he suffered martyrdom at the age of 120, when Trajan was emperor and Atticus consular governor.

The same writer tells us that in the sequel, when members of the royal house of Judah were being hunted, Symeon’s accusers were arrested too, on the ground that they belonged to it. And it would be reasonable to suggest that Symeon was an eyewitness and earwitness of the Lord, having regard to the length of his life and the reference in the gospel narrative to Mary, wife of the Clopas whose son he was, as explained in an earlier section.

The same historian tells us that other descendants of one of the ‘brothers’ of the Saviour named Jude lived on into the same reign, after bravely declaring their faith in Christ, as already recorded, before Domitian himself. He writes:

Consequently they came and presided over every church, as being martyrs and members of the Lord’s family, and since profound peace came to every church they survived till the reign of Trajan Caesar – till the son of the Lord’s uncle, the aforesaid Simon son of Clopas, was similarly informed against by the heretical sects and brought up on the same charge before Atticus, the provincial governor. Tortured for days on end, he bore a martyr’s witness, so that all, including the governor, were astounded that at the age of 120 he could endure it; and he was ordered to be crucified.

In describing the situation at that time Hegesippus goes on to say that until then the Church had remained a virgin, pure and uncorrupted, since those who were trying to corrupt the wholesome standard of the saving message, if such there were, lurked somewhere under cover of darkness. But when the sacred band of the apostles had in various ways reached the end of their life, and the generation of those privileged to listen with their own ears to the divine wisdom had passed on, then godless error began to take shape, through the deceit of false teachers, who now that none of the apostles was left threw off the mask and attempted to counter the preaching of the truth by preaching the knowledge falsely so called.

Christian-hunting stopped by Trajan

33. So great was the intensification of the persecution directed against us in many parts of the world at that time, that Pliny the Younger, one of the most distinguished governors, was alarmed by the number of martyrs and sent a report to the emperor about the number of those who were being put to death for the faith. In the same dispatch he informed him that he understood they did nothing improper or illegal: all they did was to rise at dawn and hymn Christ as a god, to repudiate adultery, murder, and similar disgraceful crimes, and in every way to conform to the law. Trajan’s response was to issue a decree that members of the Christian community were not to be hunted, but if met with were to be punished. This meant that though to some extent the terrifyingly imminent threat of persecution was stifled, yet for those who wanted to injure us there were just as many pretexts left. Sometimes it was the common people, sometimes the local authorities, who devised plots against us, so that even without open persecution sporadic attacks blazed up in one province or another, and many of the faithful endured the ordeal of martyrdom in various forms.

I have taken this story from a book referred to above, Tertullian’s Latin Defence. The translation is as follows:

And yet we have found that even hunting us is forbidden. For Pliny the Younger, as governor of a province, after condemning several Christians and depriving them of their status, was at a loss because of their numbers; and not knowing what to do in the future, he sent a report to the Emperor Trajan to the effect that except for their refusal to worship idols he had detected nothing improper in their behaviour. He also informed him that the Christians got up at dawn and hymned Christ as a god, and in order to uphold their principles were forbidden to commit murder, adultery, fraud, theft, and the like. In response. Trajan sent a rescript ordering that members of the Christian community were not to be hunted, but if met with were to be punished.¹

Bishops of Rome and Jerusalem

34. In the bishopric of Rome, in the third year of Trajan’s reign, Clement departed this life, yielding his office to Evarestus. He had been in charge of the teaching of the divine message for nine years in all.

35. When Symeon had found fulfilment in the manner described, his successor on the throne of the Jerusalem bishopric was a Jew named Justus, one of the vast number of the circumcision who by then believed in Christ.

Ignatius and his epistles

36. Pre-eminent at that time in Asia was a companion of the apostles, Polycarp, on whom the eyewitnesses and ministers² of the Lord had conferred the episcopate of the church at Smyrna. Famous contemporaries of his were Papias, bishop of the see of Hierapolis, and one who to this day is universally remembered – Ignatius, the second to be appointed to the bishopric of Antioch in succession to Peter.

There is evidence that Ignatius was sent from Syria to Rome and became food for wild animals because of his testimony to Christ. He made the journey through Asia under the strictest military guard, encouraging the Christian community, by homilies and exhortations, in every city where he stayed. In particular he warned them to guard most carefully against the heresies which were then first becoming prevalent, and exhorted them to hold fast to the apostolic tradition, which, as he was now on his way to martyrdom, he thought it necessary for safety’s sake to set down clearly in writing. Thus, when he arrived at Smyrna where Polycarp was, he wrote one epistle to the church at Ephesus referring to their pastor Onesimus, another to the church at Magnesia on the Maeander, where he refers to Bishop Damas, and a third to the church at Tralles, which, as he states, was then under the rule of Polybius. In addition he wrote to the church at Rome; in his letter he implores them not to beg him off from his martyrdom and so rob him of his longed-for hope.

In support of these statements it will be well to quote some very short passages from these letters:

All the way from Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild animals on land and sea, by night and day, fettered to ten leopards – a squad of soldiers – whom kindness makes even worse. Their disgraceful conduct makes me still more a disciple, but that does not justify me.¹ May it be for my good that the wild animals are ready for me: I pray that I may find them prompt. I shall coax them to devour me promptly, unlike some whom they have been afraid to touch; if they are unwilling and refuse, I will compel them to do it. Pardon me: I know what is best for me, and now I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen grudge my attaining to Jesus Christ! Let fire and cross, encounters with wild animals, tearing apart of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of the whole body, tortures of the devil come upon me, if only I may attain to Jesus Christ!²

These letters he wrote from Smyrna to the churches named. At a further stage of his journey he communicated in writing from Troas with the Christians at Philadelphia and the church at Smyrna, along with a personal letter to the head of that church, Polycarp. He was well aware that Polycarp was an apostolic man, so like a true and kind shepherd he commended to him the flock at Antioch, asking him to take great care of it. In his letter to Smyrna he quotes a saying from an unknown source to support what he is saying about Christ:

I know and am convinced that even after the Resurrection He was in the flesh. When He came to Peter and his companions He said to them: ‘Take hold, handle me, and see that I am not a bodiless phantom.’ And they at once touched Him and were convinced.¹

His martyrdom was well known to Irenaeus, who draws on his epistles:

As one of our people said, when because of his witness he was condemned to the beasts: ‘I am God’s wheat, ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found pure bread.’²

Polycarp also alludes to these same epistles in the letter to the Philippians that bears his name:

I urge you all to be obedient and to practise the unfailing endurance that you saw before your eyes, not only in blessed Ignatius, Rufus, and Zosimus, but in others from your own number, and in Paul himself and the rest of the apostles: satisfied that all these did not run in vain³ but in faith and righteousness, and that they are in the place that is their due, by the side of the Lord whose sufferings they shared. For they did not love this present world⁴ but the One who died on our behalf and for our sakes was raised by God… You wrote to me as did Ignatius, requesting that if anyone was going to Syria he should take your letters with him. I will do so, if I find a convenient opportunity, either personally or by sending an agent on our joint behalf. The epistles which Ignatius sent us, and any others I have by me, I am sending you as requested: they are enclosed with this letter. You will find them most helpful, for they contain faith, endurance, and all the edification that concerns our Lord.⁵

There we must leave Ignatius. As Bishop of Antioch he was succeeded by Hero.

Evangelists still eminent at that time

37. Among the shining lights of the period was Quadratus, who according to the written evidence was, like Philip’s daughters, eminent from a prophetic gift. Besides them many others were well known at the time, belonging to the first stage in the apostolic succession. These earnest disciples of great men built on the foundations of the churches everywhere laid by the apostles,¹ spreading the message still further and sowing the saving seed of the Kingdom of Heaven far and wide through the entire world. Very many of the disciples of the time, their hearts smitten by the word of God with an ardent passion for true philosophy, first fulfilled the Saviour’s command by distributing their possessions among the needy; then, leaving their homes behind, they carried out the work of evangelists,² ambitious to preach to those who had never yet heard the message of the faith ³and to give them the inspired gospels in writing. Staying only to lay the foundations of the faith in one foreign place or another, appoint others as pastors, and entrust to them the tending of those newly brought in, they set off again for other lands and peoples with the grace and cooperation of God, for even at that late date many miraculous powers of the divine Spirit worked through them, so that at the first hearing whole crowds in a body embraced with a wholehearted eagerness the worship of the universal Creator.

Clement’s Epistle: works mistakenly attributed to him

As it is impossible for me to enumerate by name all who in the first succession from the apostles became pastors or evangelists in the churches of all the known world, I have naturally included in my account the individual stories only of those whose transmission of the apostolic teaching can still be studied in their writings. 38. Obvious instances are Ignatius, in the epistles already listed, and Clement in the one universally recognized, which he indited in the name of the church at Rome to that at Corinth. In this he echoes many thoughts from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and indeed makes many verbal quotations from it, proving beyond a doubt that the document was not of recent origin, and making it seem quite natural to include it with the rest in the list of the Apostle’s writings. Paul had communicated with the Hebrews by writing to them in their native tongue; and some say that the evangelist Luke, others that this same Clement translated the original text. The second suggestion is the more convincing, in view of the similarity of phraseology shown throughout by the Epistle of Clement and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and of the absence of any great difference between the two works in the underlying thought.

It must not be overlooked that there is a second epistle said to be from Clement’s pen, but I have no reason to suppose that it was well known like the first one, since I am not aware that the early fathers made any use of it. A year or two ago other long and wordy treatises were put forward as Clement’s work. They contain alleged dialogues with Peter and Apion, but there is no mention whatever of them by early writers, nor do they preserve in its purity the stamp of apostolic orthodoxy.

The writings of Papias

39. I have now made it clear what is the acknowledged work of Clement, and have discussed the works of Ignatius and Polycarp. Papias has left us five volumes entitled The Sayings of the Lord Explained. These are mentioned by Irenaeus as the only works from his pen:

To these things Papias, who had listened to John and was later a companion of Polycarp, and who lived at a very early date, bears written testimony in the fourth of his books; he composed five.¹

That is what Irenaeus says; but Papias himself in the preface to his work makes it clear that he was never a hearer or eyewitness of the holy apostles, and tells us that he learnt the essentials of the Faith from their former pupils:

I shall not hesitate to furnish you, along with the interpretations, with all that in days gone by I carefully learnt from the presbyters and have carefully recalled, for I can guarantee its truth. Unlike most people, I felt at home not with those who had a great deal to say, but with those who taught the truth; not with those who appeal to commandments from other sources but with those who appeal to the commandments given by the Lord to faith and coming to us from truth itself. And whenever anyone came who had been a follower of the presbyters, I inquired into the words of the presbyters, what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew, or any other disciple of the Lord, and what Aristion and the presbyter John, disciples of the Lord, were still saying. For I did not imagine that things out of books would help me as much as the utterances of a living and abiding voice.¹

Here it should be observed that he twice includes the name of John. The first John he puts in the same list as Peter, James, Matthew, and the rest of the apostles, obviously with the evangelist in mind; the second, with a changed form of expression, he places in a second group outside the number of the apostles, giving precedence to Aristion and clearly calling John a presbyter. He thus confirms the truth of the story that two men in Asia had the same name, and that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each of which is still called John’s. This is highly significant, for it is likely that the second – if we cannot accept the first – saw the Revelation that bears the name of John. Papias, whom we are now discussing, owns that he learnt the words of the apostles from their former followers, but says that he listened to Aristion and the presbyter John with his own ears. Certainly he often mentions them by name, and reproduces their teachings in his writings.

I hope that these suggestions are of some value. Now we must go on, from the remarks of Papias already quoted, to other passages in which he tells us of certain miraculous events and other matters, on the basis, it would seem, of direct information. It has already been mentioned that Philip the Apostle resided at Hierapolis with his daughters: it must now be pointed out that their contemporary Papias tells how he heard a wonderful story from the lips of Philip’s daughters. He describes the resurrection of a dead person¹ in his own lifetime, and a further miracle that happened to Justus, surnamed Barsabas, who swallowed a dangerous poison and by the grace of the Lord was none the worse. After the Saviour’s ascension, this Justus was put forward with Matthias by the holy apostles, who prayed over them before drawing lots for someone to fill up their number in place of the traitor Judas. This incident is described in the Acts:

And they put forward two men, Joseph called Barsabas and surnamed Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said…²

Papias reproduces other stories communicated to him by word of mouth, together with some otherwise unknown parables and teachings of the Saviour, and other things of a more allegorical character. He says that after the resurrection of the dead there will be a period of a thousand years, when Christ’s kingdom will be set up on this earth in material form. I suppose he got these notions by misinterpreting the apostolic accounts and failing to grasp what they had said in mystic and symbolic language. For he seems to have been a man of very small intelligence, to judge from his books. But it is partly due to him that the great majority of churchmen after him took the same view, relying on his early date; e.g. Irenaeus and several others, who clearly held the same opinion.

In his own book Papias gives us accounts of the Lord’s sayings obtained from Aristion or learnt direct from the presbyter John. Having brought these to the attention of scholars, I must now follow up the statements already quoted from him with a piece of information which he sets out regarding Mark, the writer of the gospel:

This, too, the presbyter used to say. ‘Mark, who had been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of His followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. Peter used to adapt his teachings to the occasion, without making a systematic arrangement of the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark was quite justified in writing down some things just as he remembered them. For he had one purpose only – to leave out nothing that he had heard, and to make no misstatement about it.’

Such is Papias’ account of Mark. Of Matthew he has this to say:

Matthew compiled the Sayings in the Aramaic language, and everyone translated them as well as he could.

Papias also makes use of evidence drawn from 1 John and 1 Peter, and reproduces a story about a woman falsely accused before the Lord of many sins. This is to be found in the Gospel of the Hebrews.

This is all that it is necessary to add to the passages I have quoted.