these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea." In the preceding chapter he is described as being at Jerusalem. We have already said enough about the geographical notices of the author of the fourth Gospel.(1) Even those who do not admit that he was not a native of Palestine are agreed that he wrote in another country and for foreigners. "The land of Judaea," was therefore a natural expression superseding the necessity of giving a more minute local indication which would have been of little use. The second instance appealed to, though more doubtfully,(2) is Heb. xiii. 24: "They from Italy salute you." We are at a loss to understand how this is supposed to support the interpretation adopted. It is impossible that if Paul went in and out with the Apostles, preached boldly in Jerusalem, and disputed with the Hellenistic Jews, not to speak of what is added, Acts xxvi. 19 f., he could say that he was unknown by face to the churches of Judaea. There is nothing, we may remark, which limits his preaching to the Grecian Jews. Whilst apologists maintain that the two accounts are reconcilable, many of them frankly admit that the account in Acts requires correction from that in the Epistle;(3) but, on the other hand, a still greater number of critics prouounce the narrative in the Acts contradictory to the statements of Paul.(4) {215} There remains another point upon which a few remarks must be made. In Acts ix. 29 f. the cause of Paul's hurriedly leaving Jerusalem is a plot of the Grecian Jews to kill him. Paul does not in the Epistle refer to any such matter, but, in another part of the Acts, Paul is represented as relating, xxii. 17 f.: "And it came to pass, that, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I was in a trance and saw him saying unto me: Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy witness concerning me," &c, &c. This account differs, therefore, even from the previous narrative in the same book, yet critics are agreed that the visit during which the Apostle is said to have seen this vision was that which we are discussing.(1) The writer is so little a historian working from substantial facts that he forgets the details of his own previous statements; and in the account of the conversion of Paul, for instance, he thrice repeats the story with emphatic and irreconcilable contradictions. We have already observed his partiality for visions, and such supernatural agency is so ordinary a matter with him that, in the first account of this visit, he altogether omits the vision, although he must have known of it then quite as much as on the second occasion. The Apostle, in his authentic and solemn account of this visit, gives no hint of any vision, and leaves no suggestion even of that public preaching which is described in the earlier, and referred to in the later, narrative in the Acts.(2) If we {216}