James, the brother of the Lord, continued to be the head of the Jerusalem church until he was martyred--in A. D. 62, or, as others suppose, in A. D. 66. Before the war which culminated in the capture of Jerusalem in A. D. 70, the Christians of the city fled to Pella beyond the Jordan. From that time, on, though the Christians returned after the war, Jewish Christianity was quite uninfluential. The supremacy of the Jerusalem church was gone. But that church had already rendered a priceless service. It had laid the foundations of Christendom. It had sent forth the first missionaries. And it had preserved the record of Jesus' life. The Synoptic Gospels, in substance at least, are a product of the Jerusalem church.
IN THE LIBRARY.--Purves, "Christianity in the Apostolic Age," pp. 160-166, 231-239. Davis, "Dictionary of the Bible": articles on the many persons and places mentioned in the narrative, especially "Felix," "Festus," and "Herod" (4). Ramsay, "St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen," pp. 283-362; "Pictures of the Apostolic Church," pp. 270-285, 310-364. Lewin, "The Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. ii, chs. ii, iii, iv, v, and vi. Conybeare and Howson, "The Life and Epistles of St. Paul," chs. xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv and xxv. Stalker, "The Life of St. Paul," pp. 121-133. Lumby, pp. 266-380. Cook, pp. 485-534. Plumptre, pp. 136-184. Rackham, pp. 370-513.
With the lesson for to-day, we are introduced to the third group among the epistles of Paul. The epistles of the second group, which were written during the third missionary journey, are concerned with the problem of sin and salvation; the epistles of the third group are interesting especially for their teaching about the person of Christ and about the Church. A period of about three or four years separates the last epistle of the second group from the first epistle of the third. Most of this interval had been spent by Paul in captivity. Undoubtedly, during this period of enforced leisure, there had been development in Paul's thinking, but it is very difficult to determine exactly wherein that development consisted. The differences of the third group of epistles from the second are due to the difference in the readers at least as much as to a difference in Paul himself. It is hard to say just how much of Colossians and Ephesians Paul would have been incapable of writing during the third missionary journey.