Why then does not Paul say outright, "they acknowledged me an Apostle, the equal of Peter?" Some are bold enough to say--_Holsten_ in particular--"Because this is just what the Jerusalem chiefs never did, and never could have done."[45] We will only reply, that if this were the case, the passage is a continued _suggestio falsi_. No one could write the words of vv. 7-9, without intending his readers to believe that such a recognition took place. Paul avoids the point-blank assertion, with a delicacy that any man of tolerable modesty will understand. Even the appearance of "glorying" was hateful to him (2 Cor. x. 17; xi. 1; xii. 1-5, 11). [45] _Zum Evangelien d. Paulus und d. Petrus_, p. 273. Holsten is the keenest and most logical of all the Baurian succession. The Church at Jerusalem, as we gather from vv. 7, 8, observed in Paul "signs of the Apostle" resembling those borne by Peter. His Gentile commission ran parallel with Peter's Jewish commission. The labours of the two men were followed by the same kind of success, and marked by similar displays of miraculous power. The like seal of God was stamped on both. This correspondence runs through the Acts of the Apostles. Compare, for example, Paul's sermon at Antioch in Pisidia with that of Peter on the Day of Pentecost; the healing of the Lystran cripple and the punishment of Elymas, with the case of the lame man at the Temple gate and the encounter of Peter and Simon Magus. The conjunction of the names of Peter and Paul was familiar to the Apostolic Church. The parallelism between the course of these great Apostles was no invention of second-century orthodoxy, set up in the interests of a "reconciling hypothesis;" it attracted public attention as early as 51 A.D., while they were still in their mid career. If this idea so strongly possessed the minds of the Jewish Christian leaders and influenced their action at the Council of Jerusalem, we need not be surprised that it should dominate Luke's narrative to the extent that it does. The allusions to Peter in 1 Corinthians[46] afford further proof that in the lifetime of the two Apostles it was a common thing to link their names together. [46] Ch. i. 12; iii. 22; ix. 5.