APOSTLE is also used among the Jews for a kind of officer anciently sent into the several parts and provinces in their jurisdiction, by way of visitor or commissary, to see that the laws were duly observed, and to receive the monies collected for the repairation of the temple, and the tribute payable to the Romans. The Theodosian code, lib. 14. De Judæis, calls those apostoli, qui ad exigendum aurum atque argentum a patriarcha certo tempore diriguntur. Julian the apostate remitted the Jews the apostole, ἀποστολὲς; that is, as he himself explains it, the tribute they had been accustomed to send him. These apostles were a degree below the officers of the synagogues called patriarchs, and received their commissions from them. Some authors observe, that St Paul had borne this office; and that it is this he alludes to in the beginning of the epistle to the Galatians: as if he had said, Paul, no longer an apostle of the synagogue, nor sent thereby to maintain the law of Moses, but now an apostle and envoy of Jesus Christ, &c. St Jerom, though he does not believe that St Paul had been an apostle of this kind, yet imagines that he alludes to it in the passage just cited.