Discourses on Divers Texts of Scripture, Discourses 1 · Sermon 20
ACTS 2. 5.Act. 2. 5.
And there were [foreign] sojourning at Ierusalem Iews, devout men, out of every Nation under heaven.
AT the Feast of Pentecost, when that wonder hapned of the holy Ghosts descent upon the Apostles in the likenesse of Fiery tongues, there were present at Jerusalem (as the story a little after my Text informs us) men of severall Nations, as Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, Iudaea, and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphilia, AEgypt, and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, (or stranger-Romans) both Iews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; all these, upon the noyse of this strange accident came together unto the Place, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language, wherein he was born.
Many when they reade this story, suppose the people here mentioned, the most of them to have been Gentiles, and some Expositors cannot be excused from this mistake. For the more clear discerning whereof, and their better information, who may perhaps be overtaken with the same errour; I have made choyce of the words before read, for the argument of my present discourse; which tels us in expresse terms, that these Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, these Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, & the rest after mentioned under those Nationall names, were Israelites, or Iews of the dispersion; Iews born in Parthia, and Media, Iews of Elam, or Persia, Mesopotamian Iews, and so the rest of the Countries there named; all of them of the Circumcision; for so saith my Text, beginning to speak of them: There were so journing, (or if you will, dwelling) at Ierusalem, Iews of every Nation under heaven; that is, of every Nation where the Iews were dispersed.
This is yet further confirmed by S. Peters speech unto them; as when having cited the words of the Prophet Ioel, verse the 22. he saith unto them, Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Iesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, &c. Him being delivered by the determinate counsell and fore-knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Men of Israel, and such as had slain their Messias; surely those were no Gentiles. Likewise when at the hearing of this, they were pricked in their hearts, he saith unto them; Repent and be Baptized, every one of you, in the Name of Iesus Christ, for the remission of sins. For the Promise is made unto you and your children, and to all that are afarre off, even as many as the Lord shall call. The Promise, saith he, is made unto you and your children; were these then any others then Iews, or Israelites of the seed of Abraham?
Lastly, we finde that of these Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, and of the rest named with them, there were added unto the Church by this Sermon of S. Peter three thousand souls; But it is certain that Cornelius the Centurion was the first Gentile that was converted unto the Faith; Therefore these first Converts were no Gentiles. Perhaps you will say, they were Proselytes of these severall Nations, and therefore called Iews. I say, not so neither; because Proselytes are by name rehearsed among them, when it is said of those Romani advenae, (verse the tenth) that they were Iews and Proselytes; Ergo, the rest were Iews by race, and not by Religion onelyonly. But what need I to have heaped together all these proofs, when my Text alone is sufficient to evince it?
I come now therefore to a more particular illustration thereof, according to what I have thus in generall premised. And first, for the word foreign, which I translate sojourning, rather then dwelling; (for so I understand it, that they were not proper dwellers, but such as came to worship at Jerusalem from those far Countries at the Feasts of the Passeover and Pentecost; and so had been continuing there some good time) It is true that in the usuall Greek foreign & foreign, signifie a durable mansion; But with the Hellenists, in whose Dialect the Scripture speaketh, they are used indifferently for a stay of a shorter or longer time; that is, for to sojourn, as well as to dwell; as these two examples out of the Septuagint will make manifest: one, Gen. 27. 44. where Rebecca sayes to her younger son Iacob, Son arise, and flee unto Laban thy brother to Haran, foreign, and tarry with him a few dayes, untill thy brothers fury turn away; foreign is here to tarry but a few dayes. Another is in the first Book of Kin. 17. 20. where Eliah cries unto the Lord, saying, O Lord my God, hast thou also brought evill upon the widow, foreign, with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? here foreign is to sojourn onelyonly: In a word, foreign, & foreign answer to the Hebrew verb foreign, which signifies any stay, or remaining in a place.
Next for the persons here specified, Iews out of every Nation under heaven; for the right understanding thereof we are to know that before the last dispersion of the Iews by the Romans, after their Temple and City were destroyed by Titus (which at the time of this story was not, nor many years after it) there had been already two Captivities, and great dispersions of that Nation, besides some smaller scatterings: The first was of the ten Tribes, by Salmanassar King of Assyria, who is said to have planted them in Hala, and Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the Cities of the Medes; and these never (I mean any considerable part of them) returned to dwell again in their own Countrey; of these therefore we are (chiefly) to understand, to have been those which the story here cals Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; Elamites, that is, Persians of the Province of Elymais. For in those Countries which these names comprehend, were the ten Tribes placed by the Assyrian, and there still dwelt or thereabouts, in our Saviour and his Apostles time, and long after. S. Hierome upon those words in the third of Ioel, Et Filios Iuda & Filios Ierusalem vendidistis Filits Graecorum, (which he understands of the Captivity by Vespasian and Titus) tels us thus much; Filit (saith he) Iuda & Ierusalem, nequaquam Israel & decem Tribuum, qui usque hodie in Medorum urbibus & montibus habitant. The second Captivity was by Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, of the two Tribes, Judah and Benjamin, more then a hundred years after that of the ten. Now a good part of these at seventy years end returned again, under Cyrus and his successors, to dwell again in their own land, re-edified the Temple, and City of Jerusalem, re-erected their Common-wealth, which continued till our Saviours time and a little after. Notwithstanding all those that were Captives in Babylon returned not: it may be not much more then the half of them; certain it is, that a great number of them stayed there still, those especially which were rich, and so well accommodated, having no mind to stir; whence in our Saviours, and the Apostles times, there were an innumerable company of them in those parts, where they flourished with Academies, and Schools, and had Doctors not inferiour to those of Jerusalem it self: Yea, from them proceeded the Chaldee Paraphrase; and that great Doctor and Patriarch of Rabbies, R. Hillel. Of these therefore, we have reason to think, were those which are here enumerated by the name of dwellers in Mesopotamia, foreign: where note by the way that foreign, are comprehended in the number of those, whom my Text saith were foreign, which confirms my interpretation, that foreign there signifies sojourning, and not dwelling, for that they could not be said to dwell in both places.
These two dispersions beyond the river Euphrates, how numerous they were, in our Saviour and the Apostles times, we may gather from those words of King Agrippa, in Iosephus, in that Oration he made unto the Iews before that fatall siege, disswading them from rebelling against the Romans, their party being too much too weak to maintain themselves against that mighty Empire: Quos igitur (saith he) ex orbe non habitato socios in Bellum assumetis? Siquidem omnes, qui in orbe habitabili degunt, Romani sunt: Nisi fortè quis vestrum spes suas ultra Euphratem porrigat, & in Adiabenorum Regione Gentiles suos aestimet adjuturos; (Adiabenorum Regio, is that of Assyria; he goes on) Verum nec illi propter irrationabilem causam tanto se Bello implicabunt: nec, si tam probroso operi assensum darent, Parthus tamen sineret. Mark then, that they were under the dominion of the Parthians, Iosephus himself testifieth as much in his Prologue to his Tract de Bello Iudaico; where he informs us, that that History of his he had first penned patria lingua, for the use of those of his Nation in the East; which he thought soon after to publish in Greek, for the better information of the Greeks and Romans concerning the true gests of that war. Indignum esse ratus (saith he) Parthos quidem & Babylonios, Arabum, que remotissimos, & ultra Euphratem Gentis nostrae incolas, itemque Adiabenos meâ diligentiâ verè cognoscere unde coepisset Bellum, quantisque cladibus constitisset, quove modo desiisset: Graecos vero, & Romanorum aliquos, qui militiam secuti non essent, figmentis seu adulationibus captos, ista nescire: Observe here the rehearsall of his Nation; Babylonii, Parthi, Arabes, Transeuphrateni or Mesopotamienses, and Adiabeni: Besides he tels us in the same place, Quod Iudaei quidem cunctos, etiam qui trans Euphratem essent, Gentiles suos secum rebellaturos esse crediderant.
Besides these two captivities by Salmanassar and Nebuchadnezzar; the first whereof never returned again into their own land, and the second but in part; there happened a third Captivity and dispersion in the dayes of Ptolomeus Lag… one of the Greek Kings, reigning in Egypt, who surprising the City of Jerusalem, carried many of the People of the Country, of the off-spring of those who returned from Babylon, captives into Egypt, planting them at Alexandria, and the places thereabouts; whom many others followed of their own accord, partly allured by the Kings favour, (who gave them equall priviledge with those of Alexandria) and partly by the fertility of the Country: so that this Colony became a very great one. These were called Hellenists, because they spake the Greek tongue, and used the Translation of the Septuagint (which was made in AEgypt) in their Synagogues. Of these three principall dispersions, came those lesser scatterings in all parts of the Roman Empire, and elsewhere. From that of Babylon and Mesopotamia, was spread that of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, to which S. Peter as an Apostle of the Circumcision, writes his two Epistles; which may be gathered, because in his second Epistle, he salutes them from Babylon, which was their Metropolis. The Church, saith he, at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; that is, the Church of the circumcision there. From those of Alexandria and Egypt, were derived those plantations in Lybia and Cyrene, and all other Hellenists whatsoever in severall parts of the Roman Empire. Add to these, that many of those of Judaea it self, that could not live well at home, upon some occasion or other, either alluring them or constraining them, seated themselves abroad among the Gentiles, and in their Cities, being together with themselves under the same Dominion of the Roman Empire. Insomuch that King Agrippa, in that fore-mentioned oration of his, before that last siege, disswading them of Judaea from rebelling against the Romans, in regard of the evill they might bring thereby, not upon themselves onelyonly, but upon their whole Nation wheresoever living among the Gentiles, sticks not to say, foreign: For there is no people in the whole world, which hath not some part of ours dwelling amongst them; marvell not therefore, that S. Luke sayes in my Text, Iews of every Nation under heaven.
All this is confirmed out of the New Testament it self; forasmuch as before the last Captivity by Titus, which was not till almost forty years after our Saviours Ascension, and whilst their Common-wealth in the holy Land, was yet standing; we reade that almost in every City of the Gentiles, whither the Apostles came to preach the Gospel, they found Iews with their Synagogues in them: To which adde that S. Iames directs his Epistle, To the twelve Tribes scattered abroad, or as the Greek hath it, foreign, as I have also before noted, that S. Peter doth his unto the dispersion of Asia.
This is that I had to speak for the illustration of this Story, and Text: out of which besides the right understanding of Scripture, whereto it conduceth, you may observe these four things: First, the wisdom and providence of Almighty God, in so ordering the first publication of the Gospel, that the fame thereof, and of that convincing miracle, which gave authority thereunto, might be carried unto all Nations, by so many both ear and eye-witnesses of the same as these Jews were.
Secondly, a probable reason why the Apostles were so ignorant at the first, as they seem to have been, that the Gospel was to be peached unto the Gentiles, notwithstanding our Saviours Commission unto them; Go preach this Gospel unto all Nations. For it may be, they thought this command might be satisfied, in preaching the Gospel to those of the Circumcision onelyonly, which were of every Nation under heaven.
Thirdly, the Elogium here given to those who made conscience (as we speak) or Religion, to come unto the House of God to worship; they were foreign, so saith my text, Thete were sojourning in Ierusalem, Iews, devout men, &c. For there apppears no other respect why they are so called, but because they came so long a journey to worship God in his House or Temple at Ierusalem.
Fourthly, the blessed opportunities and means for salvation which they meet with, which come thither to worship. For had these Iews staid at home, as the rest of their brethren did, they had not bin partakers of such a blessing; nor witnesses of so wonderfull a miracle for confirmation of their faith, as now they were.