expression: [------] be true, as well as ironically used, it cannot be construed into a declaration of respect, but forms part of a passage whose tone throughout is proudly depreciatory. This is followed by such words as "hypocrisy" [------] and "condemned" [------] applied to the conduct of Peter at Antioch, as well as the mention of the emissaries of James as the cause of that dispute, which add meaning to the irony. This is not, however, the only occasion on which Paul betrays a certain bitterness against the elder Apostles. In his second letter to the Corinthians, xi. 5, he says, "For I reckon that I am not a whit behind the over much Apostles" [------], and again, xii. 11, "For in nothing was I behind the over much Apostles" [------]; and the whole of the vehement passage in which these references are set shows the intensity of the feeling which called them forth. To say that the expressions in the Galatian Epistle and here are "depreciatory, not indeed of the twelve themselves, but of the extravagant and exclusive claims set up for them by the Judaizers,"(1) is an extremely arbitrary distinction. They are directly applied to the Apostles, and [------] cannot be taken as irony against those who over-estimated them, but against the [------] themselves. Paul's blows generally go straight to their mark. Meyer argues that the designation of the Apostles as [------] is purely historical, and cannot be taken as ironical, inasmuch as it would be inconsistent to suppose that Paul could adopt a depreciatory tone when he is relating his recognition as a colleague by the elder Apostles;(2) and others consider that {281}