The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book III. Saint Paul.
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Ernest Renan
natural philosophy. His brother dedicated to him his book on Anger and Happy Life; people attributed to him one of the most intellectual works of the period. It appears that it was his high Hellenic culture which, under the learned Claudius, led to his selection for the administration of a province which all governments, somewhat enlightened, surrounded with delicate attentions. His sanctity obliged him to abandon the post. Like his brother, he had, under Nero, the honour of expiating by his death his distinction and his honesty. Such a man was little disposed to agree to the demands of fanatics coming to ask the civil power, which they protested against in secret, to rid them of their enemies. One day Sosthenes, the new ruler of the synagogue, who had succeeded Crispus, brought Paul before the judgment seat, and accused him of preaching a religion contrary to the law. Judaism, in fact, which had old authorisations, and all sorts of guarantees, pretended that the dissentient sect, as soon as they had made a schism in the synagogue, enjoyed no longer the charters of a synagogue. The situation was one which would have brought before the French law liberal Protestants on the day they separated themselves from recognised Protestantism. Paul was going to answer, but Gallio restrained him, and, addressing the Jews, said: “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason were that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of words and of names, and of your law, look ye to it, for I will be no judge of such matters.� This was an admirable response, worthy of being set up as a model to civil governments when they are invited to meddle with religious questions. Gallio, after he had pronounced it, gave orders to drive away both parties. A great tumult ensued. Everybody was seized with the desire to fall upon Sosthenes, and he was beaten before the judgment seat, and no one could tell whence the blows proceeded. Gallio paid little heed, and caused the place to be cleared. The sage politician had avoided entering into a dogmatic quarrel; the well-educated man refused to mix himself up with a quarrel of vulgar people; and when he saw violence break out, he sent every one away. No doubt it would have been wiser not to appear so disdainful. Gallio was well inspired in declaring himself to be incompetent to judge in a question of schism and of heresy; but yet men of mind have sometimes little prescience! It was discovered later that the quarrel of these abject sectaries was the great affair of the century. If, instead of treating a religious and social question with that unceremoniousness, the government had taken the trouble to make an impartial investigation, to make a searching public investigation, and to discontinue giving an official sanction to a religion become completely absurd; if Gallio had been disposed to take into account what it was that constituted a Jew and a Christian, to read Jewish books, to keep himself au courant of what was passing in the subterranean world; if the Romans had not been so narrow-minded, so little addicted to the study of science, many misfortunes would have been avoided. How very singular! There was, in the case now under consideration, on the one hand, a man who was one of the most intellectual and the most studious; on the other, a soul which was one of the most robust and the most original of his time, and they passed the one before the other without either perceiving the fact; and, surely, if the first blows had fallen upon Paul instead of upon Sosthenes, Gallio would have been equally indifferent. One of the things which causes the most faults to be committed by people of the world, is the superficial disgust which badly educated and unmannerly people inspire
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