XIX. THE GRECIANS AND THE HEBREWS

Acts 6:1.—“And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.”

In the first section I found an instance of consistency without design in this passage, on comparing it with the context; I now find a second like instance, on comparing it with Josephus. It seems that when the disciples became more numerous, a jealousy began to discover itself between the Grecians and the Hebrews. The circumstance is casually mentioned by St. Luke, as the accident which gave occasion to the appointment of deacons; yet how strictly characteristic is it of the country and times in which it is said to have happened.

“There was a disturbance at Cæsarea,” writes Josephus, “between the Jews and Syrians respecting the equal enjoyment of civil rights; the Jews laying claim to precedence because Herod, who was a Jew, had founded the city; the Syrians, on the other hand, admitting this, but maintaining that Cæsarea was originally called the Tower of Straton, and did not then contain a single Jew.”—Antiq. xx. 7. § 7. In the end the two parties broke out into open war. This was when Felix was governor. On another occasion, under Florus, we read of 20,000 Jews perishing at Cæsarea by the hands of the Greek or Syrian part of the population.—Bell. Jud. ii. 18.1. And again, we are told that “fearful troubles prevailed throughout all Syria, each city dividing itself into two armies, and the safety of the one consisted in forestalling the violence of the other. Thus the people passed their days in blood and their nights in terror.”—Bell. Jud. ii. 15. 2.

It is most improbable that the writer of the Acts, if he were making up a story, should have bethought himself of a circumstance at once so unimportant as this murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, and yet so truly descriptive of the people where his scene was laid. This little incident (the more trifling the better for our purpose) carries with it the strongest marks of truth; and, like the single watch-word, is a voucher for the general honesty of the party that utters it. Indeed, the establishment of one fact may be thought in itself to entail the credibility of many more. If it be certain that there was a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration, then it is probable that there was a common fund out of which widows were maintained; that many sold their possessions to contribute to this fund; that it must have been a strong motive which could urge to such a disposal of their property; that no motive could be so likely as their conviction of the truth of Christianity; and that such a conviction could spring out of nothing so surely as the evidence of miracles. I do not say that all these matters necessarily follow from the certainty of the first simple fact, but I say that, admitting it, they all follow in a train of very natural consequence.