THE FIRST MISSIONARIES

Shortly after the settlement of the controversy aroused by the conversion of Cornelius, the Church was faced by a difficulty of a similar character, but on a very much larger scale. The refugees who had left Jerusalem on the death of Stephen had included a certain number of Cypriot and Cyrenean Jews, who had abandoned all idea of returning to Jerusalem at the close of the persecution, and had decided to return to their native lands. Some of the Cypriots actually did so. Others, however, found their way to Antioch in the course of their journey, the city being the natural starting-point for the voyage from Syria. They had however been impressed by the opening which they found for preaching the Gospel to the people of the city. The Jewish community at Antioch was large and influential. It enjoyed the same political rights as the native Syrian population, and had made so many converts among them that the racial distinction between Jew and Gentile was beginning to disappear, and to be replaced by a purely religious difference. Thus the Jews at Antioch had no traditional hostility to the Gentiles as such, while the Gentiles knew Judaism as a religious cult which had many sympathisers of their own race.