IN ROME 5
the Jewish mission was not narrowminded, and it knew how to wait. Whenever a wandering teacher came, it was for the head of the syna- gogue a duty to invite him to lecture.
Perhaps (we do not know for certain) , such teachers brought, be- tween the years 40 and 50 A.D., tidings of Jesus, in whom they said the Messiah had verily appeared. At all events Jews from Pales- tine did so. It was Jesus Who set the spirits of Judaism at sword's points in the West as in the East. The Roman synagogue became the scene of an inner conflict evoking such unrest that the Emperor Claudius decided to dissolve the whole Jewish colony. When this returned after a short while, the teachings of this "certain Chrestus" had spread still farther, no doubt particularly among the "God-fear- ing.** The Jews were now divided; there were Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Both elements were united in the flourish- ing community to which Christ's great missionary in the Hellenic East sent his Epistles about the year 58. He wrote that he, Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ, was a chosen apostle elected to preach the joyous message of God . . . that the Gospel is a divine power, a means of salvation for all who receive it, believe in it, whether they be Jews or Gentiles. With these thoughts the Epistle, which has been so fateful a message to all peoples in all centuries, concerned it- self. It was a forerunner of the visit which the author was to make to the Roman community as soon as his projected trip to Spain could be undertaken.
In the spring of the year 62, after a perilous journey he came up to the capital from Sicily. He arrived a prisoner and for a time re- mained one. The Roman authorities had arrested this apostate Jew on the charge of having fomented a revolt. Paul, who appealed to the Emperor as a Roman citizen, had now to defend his position be- fore the Roman courts and the ciders of the Jewish congregation. During all of two years he lived under light arrest, guarded only by one soldier in a rented room, which he knew how to turn into a pulpit for his teaching* While he was winning his case at court, the op- position between Jews and Nazarcncs became clearer. Paul, the persistent, passionate advocate of the New Testament, separated him- self sharply from the Old. Let the Jews persist in their legalism the Gospels shall then be preached to heathen. Here the teaching
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