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    expedition into Syria , and is now known under the name of Haleb , among Asiatics , and of Aleppo among Europeans . No mention is made of it in the books of the New Testament , but it is sometimes alluded to by the Christian fathers under the name of Beraea ^ It was here , according to Epiphanius , that the sect of the Nazarenes first began to shew itself ;* and here also , as late as the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century , Jerome procured a copy of Matthew ' s Hebrew Gospel f from persons belonging to

    the same sect . Haleb ( H ^ n ) , the most ancient name of this city , J appears to have been corrupted by the Asiatic Greeks into Chalybon ; and as we have the epistle in the Greek language , may not the words e » Ba ^ v \ a > vi ( in Babylon )' , have been a very early corruption of the text for sv Xa \ v € uvi ( in Chalybon ) ? If we suppose the change to have been the result of accident , the substitution of B for X , and the transposition of x and £ , are the most easy and natural that can well be conceived ; but there are circumstances which

    render it probable that such an alteration as this may have been the effect of design . Chalybon , though famous in Syria and Asia Minor , was but imperfectly known to the scribes residing west of the Thracian Bosphorus , and has scarcely ever been known among Europeans , either in ancient or modern times , under any other name than that of Beraea , or of Aleppo . Babylon , on the other hand , must have been familiar in the early ages of Christianity , as it now is to every one with the least pretensions to geographical knowledge . What more natural , therefore , than for some scribe , meeting with the

    word Chalybon in a copy of this Epistle , and ignorant of the existence of such a place , to suspect that it was an error of some previous copyist for the word Babylon , and to erase the one and substitute the other with the laudable design of restoring what he would conceive to be the true text ? That the present reading is the result of some such confusion of ideas in the mind of an ignorant transcriber , is more , perhaps , than we have now the means of demonstrating ; but that the supposition of its being so is attended with a high degree of probability , no one , it is presumed , who reads the remarks contained in this paper , will be disposed to deny .

    The result of our inquiry , then , is briefly as follows . The First Epistle of Peter was addressed to converts from the religion of Moses ; these converts resided only in those states of Asia Minor which are specified in the inscription placed at the head of the Epistle , the other states being intentionally omitted from a feeling of delicacy towards the Apostle Paul , whose labours , before the composition of this Epistle , had been confined principally to Cilicia , his native province , and the states bordering upon it : it was probably written at Chalybon , in Syria , about the beginning of the year 53 , just on

    the eve of Paul ' s second journey into the states of Asia Minor , and entrusted for distribution to the care of Silvanus , a leading man among the Jewish converts , who accompanied Paul on his journey , and left copies of it in those countries of Asia Minor through which he passed , after leaving Lycaonia : but , what is of far more importance than all the rest , if the previous remarks are well founded , it was composed before any other writing of the epistolary kind in the New Testament , and probably formed the model upon which Paul afterwards constructed those admirable letters which he addressed to the Christian communities residing in Thessalonica , Corinth , Galatia , Rome , Colosse , Philippi , and Ephesus . R . WALLACE .

    * Haeresis xxix . § vii . -f Hieron . Op . Tom . I . p . 101 . D . X Popular tradition says , that it hats retained this name from the time of the Patriarch Abraham * See Russell " Aleppo . "

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    26 Remarks on the First Epistle of Peter .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1829, page 26, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2568/page/26/