apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

IGNATIUS THE MARTYR. 9
these. First\ Do the heathen accounts of the times previous to Trajan
exhibit this confusion between Jew and Christian which would secure
for the two religions the same treatment
at the hands of Roman law,
and which therefore is essential to the theory in question Secondly;
Do the records of Trajan's own acts imply any consciousness on his
part that he was inaugurating a new policy when he treated the mere
fact of their being Christians as a sufficient ground for punishment
Unless these two questions can be answered clearly in
the affirmative,
the ground is cut away from beneath the theory of modern critics.
I. The first of these questions does not admit a simple answer.
In the earliest stage of Christianity this confusion of Jew and Christian
is an indisputable fact. The first-. Christian teachers were Jews by
birth; they addressed themselves to Jews; they taught in Jewish synagogues;
they founded their teaching on Jewish records: and therefore
the heathen could hardly do otherwise than regard them as a Jewish
sect. Hence the complaint of the impostors at Philippi, These ' men,
being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city' (Acts xvi. 20).
Hence
the attitude of Gallio at Corinth in treating the dispute between S.
Paul and his opponents as a mere question of Jewish law (Acts xviii.
15). Hence also the necessity of the step taken by the Jews at Ephesus
in putting fonvard Alexander as their spokesman to dissociate their
cause from the new teaching (Acts xix. n). Moreover this confusion
underlies the famous notice of Suetonius respecting Messianic disturbances
at Rome in the reign of Claudius \ But from the first moment
when the Christians began to be troublesome to others and to get themselves
into trouble in consequence, it became a matter of the highest
concern to the Jews to emphasize the distinction between themselves
and the new religion ;
and they had ample means of doing so. Accordingly
we find from the records of the Neronian persecution that at that
time the Christians were commonly known as a distinct sect with a
distinct name. 'Quos...vulgus Christianos appellabat,' are the words of
Tacitus, describing the new religionists {Ann. xv. 44). Modern critics
have endeavoured to invalidate the force of this testimony by supposing
that Tacitus is here injecting into the incidents of the reign of Nero the
language and experience that belong to the age of Trajan. But this
assumption is wholly gratuitous. Tacitus himself betrays no signs of
confusing the two. His knowledge of the origin of Christianity is
decidedly more accurate than his knowledge of the origin of Judaism.
In the very expression which has been quoted, the tense is directly
^
Sueton. Claud. 25; see Philippians p. 16.