Among other such illustrations of the N.T. which will be found in the
selected passages below the following may be noted. Herod’s dying
provision to secure himself a national mourning exhibits the cruelty of
the murderer of the innocents.[45] In illustration of St. Luke’s account
of the infancy (ii. 1 ff.) we may read the full story of an enrolment
under Quirinius;[46] also of the revolt of Judas to which it gave rise
and of the later insurrection of Theudas, both of which are mentioned in
Gamaliel’s speech in the Sanhedrin (Acts v. 36 f.).[47] In the full
account of the succession of Archelaus we may discover the historical
event which suggested our Lord’s parable of the nobleman travelling to a
far country (Luke xix. 12 ff.).[48] We have independent narratives,
partly inconsistent with those in the N.T., of the marriage of Herod the
Tetrarch with Herodias[49] and of the death of Herod Agrippa I.[50] In a
beautiful story we read of a royal lady who, like Paul and Barnabas,
brought relief to famine-stricken Jerusalem in the days of Claudius.[51]
The expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Tiberius forms a precedent for
the similar action of Claudius (Acts xviii. 2).[52] With the later
scenes in St. Paul’s life we may compare what is told us of Felix and
Festus,[53] and again of Agrippa II and the marriage of Felix and
Drusilla; while the account of the Cypriot magician and his influence
over Felix strangely resembles that of Elymas and Sergius Paulus (Acts
xiii. 6 ff.).[54] We may read, moreover, of the death of James “the
Lord’s brother”;[55] of the use of the word “Corban” (Mark vii. 11) as
an oath;[56] of the tenets of the Jewish sects (in more than one
passage),[57] and how the Pharisees acquired their power a century
before the time of Christ;[58] we have a detailed account of the Jewish
treatment in the first century of a case of demoniacal possession;[59]
and, last but not least, we find in the scenes from the Jewish War the
fulfilment of our Lord’s predictions of the fate of Jerusalem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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