passed, after two hours and a half's march, Casal, a large village, half a mile distant from the sea-shore, called the Port of Tarsus, because vessels freighted for Tarsus usually come to anchor in its neighborhood. From thence turning towards the west, we arrived at our ship at the end of two hours. The merchants of Tarsus trade principally with the Syrian coast and Cyprus: imperial ships arrive there from time to time, to load grain. The land trade is of very little consequence, as the caravans from Smyrna arrive very seldom. There is no land communication at all between Tarsus and Aleppo, which is at ten journeys (caravan traveling) distant from it. The road has been rendered unsafe, especially in later times, by the depredations of Kut-*shuk Ali, a savage rebel, who has established himself in the mountains to the north of Alexandretta. Tarsus is governed by an Aga, who I have reason to believe is almost independent. The French have an agent there, who is a rich Greek merchant."
A fine instance of the value of the testimony of the Fathers on points where knowledge of the Scriptures is involved, is found in the story by Jerome, who says that "Paul was born at Gischali, a city of Judea," (in Galilee,) "and that while he was a child, his parents, in the time of the laying waste of their country by the Romans, removed to Tarsus, in Cilicia." And yet this most learned of the Fathers, the translator of the whole Bible into Latin, did not know, it seems, that Paul himself most distinctly states in his speech to the Jewish mob, (Acts xxii. 3,) that he was "born in Cilicia," as the common translation has it;—in Greek, [Greek: gegenêmenos en Kilikia],—words which so far from allowing any such assertion as Jerome makes, even imply that Paul, with Tristram Shandy-like particularity, would specify that he was "begotten in Cilicia." Jerome's ridiculous blunder, Witsius, after exposing its inconsistency with Jewish history, indignantly condemns, as "a most shameful falsehood," (putidissima fabula,) which is as hard a name as has been applied to anything in this book.
But if this blunder is so shameful in Jerome, what shall be said of the learned Fabricius, who (Biblioth. Gr. IV. p. 795,) copies this story from Jerome as authentic history, without a note of comment, and without being aware that it most positively contradicts the direct assertion of Paul? And this blunder too is passed over by all the great critical commentators of Fabricius, in Harles's great edition. Keil, Kuinoel, Harles, Gurlitt, and others equally great, who revised all this, are involved in the discredit of the blunder. "Non omnes omnia."
HIS GRECIAN LEARNING.
In this splendid seat of knowledge, Saul was born of purely Jewish parents. "A Hebrew of the Hebrews," he enjoyed from his earliest infancy that minute religious instruction, which every Israelite was in conscience bound to give his children; and with a minuteness and attention so much the more careful, as a residence in a foreign land, far away from the consecrated soil of Palestine and the Holy city of his faith, might increase the liabilities of his children to forget or neglect a religion of which they saw so few visible tokens around them, to keep alive their devotion. Yet, though thus strictly educated in the religion of his fathers, Saul was by no means cut off by this circumstance from the enjoyment of many of the advantages in profaner knowledge, afforded in such an eminent degree by Tarsus; but must, almost without an effort, have daily imbibed into his ready and ever active mind, much of the refining influence of Grecian philosophy. There is no proof, indeed, that he ever formally entered the schools of heathen science; such a supposition, is, perhaps, inconsistent
