My father’s freedmen were troubled by the arrival of the men, but they could not leave without offending my father. At first Barnabas and Paul behaved politely, speaking in turn and relating that the elders of their assembly had had a vision, according to which they were to set out on a journey to preach the good tidings, first to the Jews and then to the heathens. They had been to Jerusalem, too, with money for the holy men there, and their supporters had sealed their authority by the striking of hands. They had since preached God’s word with such power that even the sick had been cured. In one of the inland cities, Barnabas had been taken for Jupiter in human form and Paul for Mercury, so that the priest of the city had sought to have garlanded oxen sacrificed to them. They had only just been able to prevent such an ungodly demonstration. After that, the Jews had taken Paul from the city and stoned him and then, out of fear of the authorities, they had fled the place in the belief that Paul was dead. But he had come to life again.
“What are you possessed by, then,” the freedmen asked in wonder, “that you are not content to live like ordinary mortals, but expose yourselves to danger in order to bear witness to the son of God and the forgiveness of sins?”
Barbus burst out laughing at the thought that anyone had taken these two Jews for gods. My father reproached him and, putting both his hands to his head, said to Barnabas and Paul, “I have acquainted myself with your way, and I have tried to reconcile Jew with Jew for ill* wiln» of my own position among the city fathers. I should like to believe lliut you speak (he truth, but the spirit does not seem to reconcile you among yourselves. On the contrary, you quarrel among yourselves find one says one thing and another another. The holy ones in Jerusalem sold all their possessions and waited for your king to return. They have already waited for more than sixteen years, the money has gone and they live on alms. What do you say to this?”
Paul assured him that he for his part had never taught anyone to cease honest labor and divide his possessions among the poor. Barnabas also said that each person should do as the spirit moved him. After the holy ones in Jerusalem had begun to be persecuted and murdered, many people had fled to foreign lands, to Antioch too, setting up in business and practicing trades, and successfully, some more so and some less so.
Barnabas and Paul went on speaking until finally the freedmen were annoyed.
“Now that’s enough about your god,” they said. “We wish you no harm, but what is it you want of our master, pushing your way into his house late at night and disturbing him? He has enough troubles of his own.”
They related that their activities had stirred up bad blood amongst the Jews in Antioch, so that even the Pharisees and Sadducees had combined against them and the Christians. The Jews were conducting a lively campaign of conversion for the temple in Jerusalem and had collected rich gifts from the pious. But the Christian Jewish sect was tempting the newly converted over to its side by promising them forgiveness of their sins and maintaining that they need no longer follow the Jewish laws. For this reason the Jews were now bringing an action against the Christians in the city court. Barnabas and Paul intended to leave Antioch before this, but they feared that the council would have them followed and brought back before the court.
My father was pleased to be able to calm their fears.
“By various means,” he said, “I have managed to ensure that the city council does not interfere with Jewish internal matters of belief. The Jews themselves should settle disputes among their sects. Legally, we regard the Christian sect as one of the many Jewish ones, despite the fact that it demands neither circumcision nor complete obedience to the law of Moses. So the police in the city are duty bound to protect the Christians if other Jews attempt violence against them. In the same way, it is our duty to protect the other Jews if the Christians make trouble for them.”
Barnabas was deeply troubled.
“Both of us are Jews,” he said, “but circumcision is a seal on true Judaism. So the Jews of Antioch have claimed that although uncir-cumcised Christians are not legally Jews, they can be tried for violation and abuse of the Jewish faith.”
But my father was a stubborn man when he had something firmly in his head, and he said, “As far as I know, the only difference between Christian and Jew is that the Christians, both circumcised and uncir-cumcised, believe that the Jewish Messiah, or Christ, has already taken human form in Jesus of Nazareth, that he has risen from the dead, and that sooner or later he will return to found the kingdom of a thousand years. The Jews do not believe this, but are still waiting for their Messiah. But from a legal point of view, there is no difference, whether they believe that the Messiah has come or that he will come. The main thing is that they believe in a Messiah. The city of Antioch is neither. willing nor even competent to decide whether the Messiah has come or not. So the Jews and the Christians must settle the matter in peace among themselves, without persecuting each other.”
“So it has been and so it would still be,” said Paul passionately, “if the circumcised Christians weren’t so cowardly, like Cephas for instance, who first ate together with the uncircumcised but then withdrew from them because he was more afraid of the holy men in Jerusalem than of God. I told him straight out what I thought about his cowardice, but the damage was done and now the circumcised eat more and more frequently by themselves and the uncircumcised do the same. So the latter can no longer be called Jews, even legally. No, amongst us there are neither Jews nor Greeks, neither freedmen nor slaves, but we are all of us Christians.”
My father remarked that it would be unwise to put forward this argument to the court, since by it the Christians would lose an irreplaceable advantage and protection. It would be more rational for them to admit that they were Jews and benefit from all the political advantages of Judaism, even if they did show little respect for circumcision and the Jewish laws.
But he did not succeed in convincing these two Jews. They had their own unshakable belief that a Jew was a Jew and all others heathens, but a heathen could become Christian and in the same way a Jew could also become a Christian and then there was no difference between them, but they were one with Christ. Nevertheless, a Jew as a Christian continued to be a Jew, but a baptized heathen could become a Jew only by circumcision, and this was neither necessary nor even desirable any longer, for the whole world must know that a Christian did not need to be a Jew.
My father said bitterly that this was a philosophy that was beyond his comprehension. In his day, he himself had been humbly willing to become a subject of the kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, but then he was not received because he was not a Jew. The leaders of the Nazareth sect had even forbidden him to talk about their king. As far as he could see, he would be wisest to continue to wait for the affairs of the kingdom to be clarified so that they would also be comprehensible to simpler minds. Clearly it was providence that was now sending him to Rome, for such unpleasantness was to be expected in Antioch from both Jews and Christians that even the best mediators could no longer offer a solution.
But he promised to suggest to the city council that the Christians should not be tried for having violated the Jewish faith, since they by receiving the baptism, devised by the Jews, and by admitting a Jewish Messiah as their king, in any case de facto if not also literally de. jure, in some way or other were Jews. If the council admitted this standpoint, then the matter could at least be postponed and the Jews’ action set aside for a time.