speech also must be pronounced inauthentic.(1) It may be observed, in passing, that James completely disregards the statement which Barnabas and Paul are supposed to make as to what God had wrought by them among the Gentiles; and, ignoring their intervention, he directly refers to the preceding speech of Peter claiming to have first been selected to convert the Gentiles. We shall reserve discussion of the conditions which James proposes to impose upon Gentile Christians till we come to the apostolic decree which embodies them. The precise signification of the sentence with which (ver. 21) he concludes has been much debated, but need not detain us long. Whatever may be said of the liberal part of the speech it is obvious that the author has been more true to the spirit of the time in conceiving this and other portions of it, than in composing the speech of Peter. The continued observance of the Mosaic ritual, and the identity of the synagogue with the Christian Church are correctly indicated; and when James is again represented (xxi. 20 ff.) as advising Paul to join those who had avow, in order to prove that he himself walked orderly and was an observer of the law, and did not teach the Jews to apostatize from Moses and abandon the rite of circumcision, he is consistent in his portrait It is nevertheless clear that, however we may read the restrictions which {249} James proposes to impose upon Gentile Christians, the author of Acts intends them to be considered as a most liberal and almost complete concession of immunity. "I judge," he makes James say, "that we trouble not those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God;" and again, on the second occasion of which we have just been speaking, in referring to the decree, a contrast is drawn between the Christian Jews, from whom observance of the law is demanded, and the Gentiles, who are only expected to follow the prescriptions of the decree. James is represented as supporting the statement of Peter how God visited the Gentiles by "the words of the Prophets," quoting a passage from Amos. ix. 11, 12. It is difficult to see how the words, even as quoted, apply to the case at all, but this is immaterial. Loose reasoning can certainly not be taken as a mark of inauthenticity. It is much more to the point that James, addressing an assembly of Apostles and elders in Jerusalem, quotes the prophet Amos freely from the Septuagint version,(1) which differs widely in the latter and more important part from the Hebrew text.(3) The passage in the Hebrew reads: ix. 11. "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old, 12. that they may possess the remnant of {250}