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BIBLICAL CRITICISM.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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( 131 )
Biblical Criticism.
BIBLICAL CRITICISM .
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For the Monthly Repository .
Feb . 17 , -18 . 10 . Acts ix . 31 . " Then had the churches rest throughout all'Judea and Galiiee and Samaria , and were edified ; and walking in the fear of the Lord , and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost , were multiplied . " The cause of the
rest here mentioned , has in vain been investigated by learned men . Dr . Lardner , vol . i . p . 97 , su p ^ poses that suspension of persecution was occasioned by the imminent ruin which threatened the Jews by the mad attempt of Caligula to set up his statue at Jerusalem , But such a cause as this ,
if the true one , implies the severest reflection on the followers of Jesus . It supposes that they were so unfeeling , so destitute of all sympathy with their brethren the Jews , as to enjoy rest , to be comforted , and to be edified ^ at a time when the whole country was involved in one scene of horror and consternation ; and that , too on account of an . event in which the Jewish converts were as deeply interested as the rest of their countrymen . Were they
capable of rest and co ? nforty when the whole nation lay , as Josephus relates , prostrate on the ground , they might more fitly be deemed tnonsters , than the followers of the benevolent Jesus . The real cause of the rest above noticed , was an edict which Tiber ius , a little before his death , caused to be sent to the prsefects ,
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and to be published ill all the provinces in favour of the Jews ^ i . e . of the peaceable and welldisposed converts to Christianity among the Jews , whose faith as yet Jay sheltered under the common name of Judaism . This fact is asserted by Tertullian , Eusebius , Orosius , &c . SeeLardner , vol . vii , p . 232 . The authority of these men is , indeed , questioned- ; but the fact stands on the indisputable testimony of Philo *
whose words have escaped the notice of Lardner . The passage is to this effect , vol . ii . p . 589 . " AIL nations , though prejudiced against the Jews , have been careful not to abolish the Jewish rites ; and the same caution was preserved in the reign of Tiberius ; though , indeed , the Jews in Italy have been distressed by the machinations of Sejanus . For after his death * the emperor became
immediately sensible , that the accusations against the Jews were lying calumnies , the mere inventions of Sejanus , who was eager to devour a nation ,, that alone or chiefly would , he knew , be likely to oppose his impious desi gns * And to the constituted authorities in every place , he ( Tiberius ) sent orders not to molest in their several cities the men of that nation , excepting the guilty only , ( who were very few , ) and not to suppress any of their institutions , but , on the contrary , to regard as a . trust committed to
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ON ACTS ix . 31 *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1810, page 131, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2402/page/27/
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