By the power of heaven and its assistance, the salvific teaching illumined, as with a ray of sunshine, the entire universe, and immediately, in the words of the Holy Scriptures, "the voice of the wondrous 7 Evangelists and Apostles went through all the earth" "and their words to the ends of the world."

(2) And indeed, in every city, in every village (as full granaries) there arose Churches, uniting a multitude of people. People whose souls were shackled by the superstitious horror of idols, this ancient disease inherited from ancestors and from ancient error, were revived by the power of Christ, which His disciples taught and performed miracles, delivered themselves as if from terrible masters, freed themselves from the heaviest fetters. With disgust they turned away from all pagan polytheism, confessed that there was only one God, the Creator of all that exists, and began to honor Him according to the commandments of true piety, imbued with the Spirit of God, with intelligent service, the seeds of which our Savior sowed among people.

(3) The mercy of God was also poured out on other nations. In Caesarea of Palestine, Cornelius was the first to accept the faith of Christ together with his entire household (he had a vision from heaven, and the Apostle Peter served him), and in Antioch - very many Greeks, to whom the disciples who scattered after the persecution of Stephen preached. The Church of Antioch soon became numerous and prosperous. At that time most of the prophets of Jerusalem were there, and with them Barnabas, Paul, and many other brothers. There, for the first time, as if from an abundant inexhaustible spring, the name of Christians flowed. (4) And since Agabus, one of the prophets who were there, had foretold that there would be a famine, Paul and Barnabas were sent out to serve their brethren.

4

Tiberius died after a reign of almost twenty-two years; power was given to Gaius after him. He immediately placed the Jewish crown on Agrippa, making him king over the tetrarchy of Philip and Lysanias, and a short time later entrusted him with the tetrarchy of Herod. This Herod (during his reign the Saviour suffered) he punished together with his wife Herodias for many crimes by lifelong exile. Joseph also testifies to this.

2 Under Gaius Philo, a very remarkable man, not only among our people, but also among those who had received a Greek education, became very well known. He was descended from an ancient Jewish family and was in no way inferior to those who were known in Alexandria for their duties. 3 How much and what kind of labor he put into the study of the sciences pertaining to the faith and the fatherland, is evident in practice to everyone. How strong he was in philosophy and in the liberal arts, the acquaintance with which the Greek education requires, there is no need to say about this. He studied Plato and Pythagoras with special diligence and, they say, surpassed all his contemporaries in this.

5

He tells in five books what happened to the Jews under Gaius, depicting in detail the madness of Gaius, who proclaimed himself a god and during his reign constantly mocked people. He tells of the misfortunes of the Jews under him, and of his embassy to Rome, whither he was sent to intercede on behalf of his fellow tribesmen of Alexandria; about how, defending the laws of his country before Gaius, he was only maliciously ridiculed in response. He even had reason to fear for his life. 2 These events are also mentioned by Josephus in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities. Here is his verbatim story: "In Alexandria there was a quarrel between the Jews and the Greeks there; three ambassadors were chosen from each side, who appeared before Gaius. 3 From the Alexandrians one of the ambassadors was Apion; he reviled the Jews very much, and among other things said that they did not want to pay homage to Caesar: all the subjects of Rome erected altars and temples to Gaius, and generally addressed him as they did to other gods, and only the Jews thought it shameful to erect statues of him and swear by his name. 4 Apion made many grave accusations, hoping, and not without reason, that Gaius would lose his temper. Philo, the head of the Jewish embassy, a man of renown in every respect, the brother of the Alavarach Alexander, well acquainted with philosophy, wanted to come forward and refute these accusations, but Gaius forbade him and ordered him to go away; he was in great anger and clearly intended to deal cruelly with the ambassadors. 5 Philo went out, heaped with insults, and advised the Jews who were with him to take courage: Gaius, being angry with them, was preparing for himself God's punishment

(6) Thus Joseph relates. And Philo himself, in a book which he entitled "The Embassy," describes in detail and carefully everything that happened to him at that time. I omit the greater part of his narrative, and will quote only what the reader can clearly see from which all that soon happened to the Jews, both then and after, befell them for their transgression against Christ.

7 Philo first tells us that in the time of Tiberius a certain Sejanus, the mightiest man of the emperor's entourage, took every effort to exterminate the whole tribe in Rome. In Judea, Pilate (in whose presence a crime against the Saviour was committed) tried to commit in the temple - he was still standing in his place - something forbidden for the Jews and caused great agitation among them.

6

After the death of Tiberius, Gaius received power; He mocked many and many in different ways, but he inflicted the most grievous offense on the Jewish tribe. This can be briefly learned from Philo, who writes verbatim as follows:

2 "There was something uneven and strange about Gaius' attitude towards everyone, and especially towards the Jewish race. He hated the Jews bitterly; he declared the houses of worship in all the cities, beginning with Alexandria, his property, filled them with statues and images of himself (he allowed others to erect them, but he himself erected them with violence). The temple in the holy city, which remained inviolable for the time being and enjoyed all the rights of refuge, he remade in his own way and turned into his own, personal sanctuary, which was called the temple of Zeus the Newly-appeared - Gaius.

3 The same writer, in the second book of his work, entitled On the Virtues, tells of the innumerable grievous and indescribable calamities which befell the Jews of Alexandria under the same Gaius. Joseph echoes him, noting that misfortunes have befallen all the people since the time of Pilate, when the crime against our Saviour was committed. (4) Listen to his verbatim account in the second book of the Jewish War.