4. Arrangements settled by the Apostles 2 4 6 do. do. IO. 51. The Gospel not specially addressed to Fools. 51a. The true ground of Old Testament Inspiration INTRODUCTORY NOTES. CORNELIUS TACITUS (b. cir. 54) reached the consulship 97, wrote his Annales cir. 115, and died a few years later. Extract I gives a heathen view of the Neronian persecution. The standpoint is that of a Roman aristocrat, to whom the Christians are detestable enough, but who is too intent on blackening Nero to go far out of his way for them. Clement of Rome may have been a freedman of the T. Flavius Clemens consul 95, and put to death by his cousin Domitian. He wrote the letter of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth (95 or 96). His so-called Second Epistle is a sermon preached perhaps at Corinth about half a century later. Extract II is the opening of the letter, with its picture of the Corinthian Church in its past prosperity. In Extract III is a Christian view of the Neronian persecution, and it records the execution of the two great apostles. Extract IV recites that the apostles made arrangements for the orderly government of the Churches, so that the Corinthians have done wrong in turning blameless presbyters out of office. Cassius Dio Cocceianus (b. 155: governed several provinces: second consulship 229) wrote a history of Rome to his own time in eighty books, of which the last twenty or so are preserved chiefly in the Epitome of Joannes Xiphilinus, a Byzantine writer of the eleventh century. Extract IVa is our fullest account of Domitian's persecution. It is certain from the evidence of the catacombs that Domitilla was a Christian and there cannot be very much doubt of the consuls Glabrio and Clement (91 and 95). |