Here, then, we have a member of a sect more
aggressive than any before known in the promulgation of its opinions,
taking the lead in the teaching and defence of these opinions in a city
to which the Jews of all nationalities resorted periodically to keep the
great feasts. If the holding of any position would sharpen a man's
natural intellect and give him a power over words, and a mental grasp of
ideas to which in youth he had been a stranger, that position would be
the leading one he held in the Church of such a city as Jerusalem.
In the course of the thirty years which, according to the author of
"Supernatural Religion," he lived there, he must have constantly had
intercourse with Alexandrian Jews and Christians. It is as probable as
not that during this period he had had converse with Philo himself, for
the distance between Jerusalem and Alexandria was comparatively
trifling. At Pentecost there were present Jews and proselytes from Egypt
and the parts of Libya about Cyrene. There was also a Synagogue of the
Alexandrians.
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