made them prominent.
Finally, it is clear from Acts that Philip began to preach to the
Gentiles as soon as he left Jerusalem, and that some of the Cypriots
and Cyrenaeans did the same.

There is thus considerable though not overwhelming evidence that
preaching to the Gentiles began somewhat sooner than is popularly
supposed, and that before the conversion of Paul near Damascus by the
vision of the risen Lord, or before the conversion of Peter by the
episode of Cornelius, there was already a Christian mission to the
Gentiles. The importance of this is that it enables us to see the
history of the early Church in a somewhat different perspective. It
shows that Paul was not the first, though he was undoubtedly the
greatest, of the Christians who preached to the Gentiles. He was {59}
a part of Hellenistic Christianity, and probably, as will be seen
later, not the most extreme of its adherents.

We have, then, to imagine the gradual rise of a Hellenising movement
among the Christians, of which the Seven were probably the original
leaders in Jerusalem, while unknown disciples, of whom we only know
that they were successful in Damascus, were carrying it on in other
places. The Twelve appear to have regarded the movement with doubt and
suspicion, and the Jews in Jerusalem always distinguished between the
original disciples and the Hellenists. Gradually, however, the
opposition of the Twelve and their followers crumbled away. The final
defection, from the point of view of Judaism, was that of Peter. To
judge from Acts he had undertaken a mission in Palestine, following up
the work of Philip and probably of others, but the story brings to
notice one of the characteristic weaknesses of Acts as history. It
always omits or minimises differences of opinion and quarrels among
Christians. We know this by comparing the Epistles with the Acts. It
is therefore perfectly legitimate to suppose that there may well have
been far more friction at first between the Hellenist missionaries and
the Twelve than Acts suggests. But in the end Peter had a vision at
Joppa which convinced him that he was wrong, and he accepted Cornelius
as a brother Christian. Acts would have us understand that the whole
Church at Jerusalem accepted Peter's position, {60} but in view of the
Judaistic controversy, which continued to rage much later than this
time, it is certain that this is not in accordance with fact. It is
significant that soon after thi