THE HEATHEN WORLD AND ST. PAUL, ST. PAUL IN DAMASCUS BY THE REV. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A., CANON OF CANTERBURY; CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY, OXFORD. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF! the committee of GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION LONDON: OCT 1877 BODLEIANA SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES: 77, GREAT QUEEN street, LINCOLN'S-INN FIELDS; AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. New York: Pott, Young, & Co. PREFACE. In this little Volume an attempt is made to describe and illustrate the external surroundings of the Apostle Paul, from the day when he quitted Jerusalem armed with the High Priest's mandate to the night when he was let down from the wall of Damascus in a basket, and so escaped the assassination with which the Damascene Jews threatened him. The time covered is called by the Apostle himself a space of "three years" (Gal. i. 18); but, according to ordinary Jewish usage, this expressio need not mean more than a year and a few months. This period, short as it is, is one of the most important in the world's history, since it embraces the event on which, humanly speaking, the conversion of the whole civilized world to Christianity altogether depended, viz., the conversion of St. Paul himself. It has not been within the scope of the writer to consider that event in any but its purely objective aspect, or to deal, unless incidentally, with the character, the feelings, or the teaching of the great |