of the tradition on the subject, then try to determine the probable length of Peter's residence at Rome, and finally examine the statements made concerning the manner of his death.

The testimonies in regard to Peter's settlement in Rome,

The oldest is that of Peter himself in the date of his abode subscribed to his first Epistle, taken according to its oldest interpretation, c. v: 13: "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you, and so doth Marcus my son (the Evangelist)." True, the sense of Babylon here is controverted. Neander, Steiger, de Wette, Wieseler and others, understand by it the celebrated Babylon or Babel on the Euphrates. The prophecy of the Hebrew prophet against this great city (Is. xiii: 19ff., xiv :. 4, 12, xlvi: 1f.) had been indeed terribly fulfilled, and it presented to view in the time of the Apostles, as Strabo, Pausanias and Pliny with one voice assure us, only a scene of ruins (ovdir un teixos), a desolation (solitudo).' Still it may be assumed surely, that some portion of it yet remained habitable, and as we know that there were many thousand Jews in the satrapy of Babylon, the case in and of itself allows the supposition that Peter may have chosen just this region as the seat of his labors. But if so, we might reasonably expect that some trace would have been preserved of his activity there afterwards. Tradition however knows nothing of a sojourn of Peter in the kingdom of Parthia, while yet it follows there the steps of the apostle Thomas. Then again, it is scarcely possible to explain, on this interpretation, the acquaintance

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study and inquiry to the field of ecclesiastical antiquities, then by Schröckh Mynster, Gieseler, Neander, (who however in the latest edition of his work on the Acts, staggered apparently somewhat by the argument of Baur, speaks no longer so decidedly in favor of the tradition as before,) by Credner, Bleek, Olshausen and Wieseler (in the second excursus of his chronology), not to mention a number of others who have not entered into any close investigation of the subject.

'See the passages in Meyerhoff's Einl. in die petrin. Schriften (1835) p.

129.

2 Josephus Antiq. xv, 3, 1, Philo de legat. ad Caj. p. 587. True, Josephus also informs us xviii, 9, 8, that under the emperor Caligula many Jews from fear of persecution removed from Babylon to Seleucia, and that the rest were driven away five years after by a pestilence. They might however very well have returned again before the date of Peter's Epistle, as Caligula was already dead a. 41.

Origen in Eusebius Hist. Eccl. III, 1.

which our Epistle is acknowledged to show with the later Epistles of Paul, since between Babylon and the Roman empire there was but little communication. Equally hard to understand would be Peter's association with Mark (v: 13), since this last in the years 61-63 was in Rome (Col. iv: 10, Philem. 23), and shortly after is supposed to be in Asia Minor, from whence he is again called to Rome by Paul a short time before his martyrdom (2 Tim. iv: 11). If he followed this invitation, as we have a right to suppose, he could not so readily find his way again to the banks of the Euphrates. The case however becomes quite simple, if Peter himself about that time or soon after came to Rome and there wrote his epistle.-These difficulties constrain us to return to the earliest and in ancient times only prevalent interpretation of Babylon, by which it is taken to mean Rome. This is known to be its sense in the Apocalypse, as even Roman Catholic expositors allow, c. xiv: 8, xvi: 19, xvii: 5, xviii: 2, 10, 21, comp. the allusion xvii: 9 to the seven hills, and xvii: 18, to the universal dominion of Rome.' It has been objected indeed, that this symbolical designation of the metropolis of paganism suits well enough for a prophetical poetical book, such as the Apocalypse, but not for the prose style of a common letter. But this objection is completely borne down by the following considerations in favor of the figurative sense namely, 1. The unanimous testimony of the ancient church; 2. The analogy of the other titles in the form of salutation, which require to be taken also figuratively. Neander will have it indeed, that "ovvExExtn" is to be understood of Peter's wife, and that " Marcus my son" stands for his son literally according to the flesh. But although the apostle according to 1 Cor. ix: 5, did take his wife along with him in his missionary journeys, the mention of her in an official circular, and particularly to churches with which according to Neander's view he had no personal acquaintance, would still be certainly out of place and without all analogy in christian antiquity; and we

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'In the same way in a fragment of the Sibylline Books, supposed to belong to the first century, (v: 143, 159) Rome is called Babylon.

So already l'apias or Clemens Alex. in Euseb. 11, 15, the subscription of the Epistle, Jerome catal. s. Petr., Oecumenius, &c. The allusion to Rome is held also, though not with all on the same grounds, by Grotius, Lardner, Cave, Semler, Hitzig, Baur, Schwegler, Thiersch..

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Apostelgesch. II, S, 590, Anm. 4. So also Mill, Bengel, Meyerhoff. On the other hand Steiger, de Wette, and Wieseler, though they take Babylon literally, refer avvEKλEKT Still to the church in that place and "Marcus" to the Evangelist.

see not besides, how oveλexty should just of itself express the notion of a wife, nor why in that case the clause v Baßvar is added just in this grammatical connection. All these difficulties disappear, if we supply xxxnoía and understand by it the christian congregation, as is done already by the Peschito and the Vulgate. So far as Mark is concerned, tradition knows nothing of a son of Peter according to the flesh by any such name.' It is altogether natural, on the other hand, to understand here the well known missionary assistant of Paul and Peter, the Evangelist of this name, who sprang from Jerusalem and had been probably converted by Peter (Acts xii: 12ff.), but at the same time formed also a bond of connection between him and the Apostle of the Gentiles, as did Silvanus likewise the bearer of the Epistle. If we are required thus, in harmony with the older expositors, to take vios tropically according to the familiar usage of the N. T. (comp. 1 Cor. iv: 16-18, Gal. iv: 19, 1 Thes. i: 2, 18, 2 Tim. i: 2, ii: 1), and to refer oven to the congregation, it forms an argument in favor of the symbolical sense also of Babylon. Nay, we find just in this combination of the two terms a significant contrast, particularly under the oppressed condition in which the christians are regarded as standing. The Apostle speaks of the churches to whom he writes as "elect” (èxλɛxτoi Ï. 2.), and so now also of the church from whose midst he writes as "co-elect," chosen of God to everlasting life in the very seat of the deepest Pagan corruption, that must necessarily call up to a writer in particular like Peter, so thoroughly imbued with the prophetical style of the Old Testament, the description which is there given of the ancient Babylon. If we assume moreover that the epistle was written in the later years of Nero, when cruelty and tyranny were in full force, and shortly before the terrible scenes of Nero's persecution, at a time thus when the Christians, as the letter itself and the testimony of Tacitus show, had already become the object of foul suspicion and outrageous calumny,-it must be allowed that the symbolical designation of Rome, which Silvanus could easily explain to the readers in case they should not at once understand it, falls in very well with the entire contents and circumstances of the communication. The naming of Rome literally would have been clearly in this connection far less characteristic.

1 Clemens Alex. speaks indeed in a general way of Peter's having children. Strom. III. f. 448 : Πέτρος μὲν γὰρ καὶ Φίλιππος ἐπαιδοποιήσαντο, and tradition names a daughter, Petronilla, (comp. Acta Sanct. 30 May); but no Marcus is ever mentioned as his son.

To pass on now to the apostolical fathers, the Roman bishop Clement, a disciple of Paul, informs us indeed that Peter after having endured many sufferings died as a martyr, but gives neither the place nor the manner of his death; probably because it came not in his way, and was something which he could consider as generally known. For wherever else the place of Peter's martyrdom is mentioned, it is always Rome, and no other church laid claim to this honor, although it was a great point with the churches then to possess distinguished martyrs.-Omitting the testimony of Papias in a somewhat obscure passage in Eusebius (II, 15), the Epistle of his cotemporary Ignatius to the Romans takes for granted that Peter had preached to them;" as does also a fragment from the Prædicatio Petri, which belongs to the beginning of the second century. Still more distinctly Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, (about a. 170), in his Epistle to the Romans, speaks of the Roman and Corinthian churches as the common planting of Peter and Paul, and adds: "For both taught alike in our Corinth when they planted us, and both also in Italy at the same place (uose, which can be understood in its connection only of Rome), after teaching there suffered alike at the same time the death of martyrdom." That Peter is here styled one of the founders of the Corinthian church is indeed in any case very inaccurate, and possibly may be drawn simply from a misunderstanding of what Paul says 1 Cor. i: 12 of the party of Cephas, whose existence in this church implies some relation to it at least indirectly on his part. But we have no right on account of this error to reject the whole state

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In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, which belongs still to the second half of the 1st cent, c. 5 : Πέτρος διὰ ζῆλον ἄδικον οὐχ ἕνα, οὐδὲ δύο ἀλλὰ πλείονας ὑπέμεινεν (according to others υπήνεγκεν) πόνους καὶ ὄντω μαρτυρήσας επορεύθη εἰς τὸν ὀφειλόμενον τόπον τῆς δόξης. Then follows a more full and definite testimony in regard to the end of Paul. The word uapropño as is to be understood here probably in its original sense of witnessing by word, as in the passage immediately following, and not in the sense of martyrdom as it is usually taken. The last follows however out of the whole context, particularly the clause going just before which Clement then illustrates by examples: dia ζῆλον και φθόνον οἱ μέγιστοι καὶ δικαιότατοι στύλοι εδιώχθησαν, καὶ ἕως θανάτου ἦλθον, 2 c. 4 : οὐχ ὡς Πέτρος καὶ Παύλος διατάσσμαι ὑμῖν.

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In Cyp. Op. ed. Rig. p. 139: liber qui inscribitur Pauli prædicatio (which was the last part probably of the praedicatio Petri, comp. Credner's Beit. zur Einl. I, 360), in quo libro invenies, post tanta tempora Petrum et Paulum, post conlationem evangelii in Hierusalem et mutuam altercationem et rerum agendarum dispositionem, postremo in urbe, quasi tunc primum, invicem sibi esse cognitos.

In Eusebius H. E. 1. II, c. 25.

ment, and it is after all possible even that Peter, after Paul's confinement, on his way perhaps to Rome, may have visited Corinth, in which case he could not indeed literally found the church but still might strengthen it and confirm it in the faith. -Irenæus, who stands connected through Polycarp with the Apostle John, says of Peter and Paul, that they preached the gospel and founded the church at Rome.'-Somewhat later, about the year 200, the Roman presbyter Caius, in his tract against the Montanist Proclus of Asia Minor, writes: "I can however show the monuments (rpóraia) of the Apostles (Peter and Paul). For if you go to the Vatican or on the way to Ostia, you will find the monuments of the men who founded this church."-Tertullian congratulates the Roman church, because there Peter had been made conformable to the sufferings of Christ, (that is crucified), Paul crowned with the end of the Baptist, (that is, beheaded), and John after being plunged in seething oil, without hurt, (a fabulous addition no doubt), banished to Patmos.

These are the oldest and most important testimonies, which are drawn from the most different parts of the church. They show it is true some want of accuracy, since Peter cannot be called strictly the founder of the church at Rome. Still more are the statements we meet with in the apocryphal writings, and in the later church fathers, as Eusebius and Jerome, nay in Clemens Alexandrinus already (in Euseb. II, 15), full of fabulous embellishments, particularly in regard to Peter's meeting with Simon Magus at Rome, which rests probably on false conclusions drawn from the narration Acts viii: 18ff., and on a mistake of Justin Martyr who supposed he had seen a statue of Simon Magus in that city. But such accumulations, gathered by the onward progress of an old tradition, by no means authorise us to discard also its primary substance. This is not to be explained in the case before us certainly from the rivalry of the Roman Jewish Christians towards the Pauline Gentile Christians; for it must then have been met by these last with early decided contradiction; whereas on the contrary just the oldest witnesses for it belong mainly to the school of Paul and John. Just as little did it spring from the hierarchical ambition of the

1 Adv. haer. III, 1, comp. 3, where the Roman church is spoken of as “a gloriosissimis duobus apostolis, Petro et Paulo, fundata et constituta ecclesia."

In Eusebius H. E. II, 25.

De praesc; haer. c. 36.