experienced special favour. In Antioch their rights and immunities were recorded on tables of

But, indeed, the capital of Syria was one of their favourite resorts. It will be remembered what

importance attached to it in the early history of the Christian Church. Antioch was the third city

of the Empire, and lay just outside what the Rabbinists designated as `Syria' and still regarded

as holy ground. Thus it formed, so to speak, an advanced post between the Palestinian and the

Gentile world. Its chief Synagogue was a magnificent building, to which the successors of

Antiochus Epiphanes had given the spoils which that monarch had brought from the Temple.

The connection between Jerusalem and Antioch was very close. All that occurred in that city

was eagerly watched in the Jewish capital. The spread of Christianity there must have excited

deep concern. Careful as the Talmud is not to afford unwelcome information, which might have

led to further mischief, we know that three of the principal Rabbis went thither on a mission - we

can scarcely doubt for the purpose of arresting the progress of Christianity. Again, we find at a

later period a record of religious controversy in Antioch between Rabbis and Christians.9 Yet

the Jews of Antioch were strictly Hellenistic, and on one occasion a great Rabbi was unable to

find among them a copy of even the Book of Esther in Hebrew, which, accordingly, he had to

write out from memory for his use in their Synagogue. A fit place this great border-city,

crowded by Hellenists, in close connection with Jerusalem, to be the birthplace of the name

`Christian,' to send forth a Paul on his mission to the Gentile world, and to obtain for it a charter

of citizenship far nobler than that of which the record was graven on tablets of brass.

But, whatever privileges Israel might enjoy, history records an almost continuous series of

attempts, on the part of the communities among whom they lived, to deprive them not only of

their immunities, but even of their common rights. Foremost among the reasons of this

antagonism we place the absolute contrariety between heathenism and the Synagogue, and the

social isolation which Judaism rendered necessary. It was avowedly unlawful for the Jew even

`to keep company, or come unto one of another nation.'10 To quarrel with this, was to find fault

with the law and the religion which made him a Jew. But besides, there was that pride of

descent, creed, enlightenment, and national privileges, which St. Paul so graphically sums up as

`making boast of God and of the law.'11 However differently they might have expressed it, Philo

and Hillel would have been at one as to the absolute superiority of the Jew as such. Pretensions

of this kind must have been the more provocative, that the populace at any rate envied the

prosperity which Jewish industry, talent, and capital everywhere secured. Why should that

close, foreign corporation possess every civic right, and yet be free from many of its burdens?

Why should their meetings be excepted from the `collegia illicita?' why should they alone be

allowed to export part of the national wealth, to dedicate it to their superstition in Jerusalem?

The Jew could not well feign any real interest in what gave its greatness to Ephesus, it