Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/140

Rh 124 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ward, which imply the same authorship. There are some difficulties in the way of this conclusion. Two of these deserve special notice. If we turn to the last chapter of the Gospel, we find it stated there (ver. 13) that two dis ciples met Jesus on the day of the resurrection, as they were going to Emmaus. Towards nightfall (ver. 29) he entered the village with them; and as he reclined with them, he became known to them, and disappeared. Whereupon &quot;at that very hour&quot; (ver. 33) they rose up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven assembled, and told them what had happened to them. &quot; While they were saying these things, he himself stood in the midst cf them&quot; (ver. 36). The apostles gave him a piece of fish, and he ate it. &quot; But he said to them&quot; (ver. 44), so the narrative goes on, and it then relates his speech; and at ver. 50 it says, &quot; He led them out to Bethany,&quot; and then disappeared from them. This disappearance was final; and if the words used in the Gospel make us hesitate in determining it to be his ascension, such hesitation is removed by the opening words of the Acts. According to the Gospel, therefore, all the events now related took place, or seem to have taken place, on the day of the resurrection, or they may possibly have extended into the next morning, but certainly not later. The Acts, on the contrary, states that Jesus was seen by the disciples for forty days, and makes him deliver the speech addressed to his disciples and ascend into heaven forty days after the resurrection. The other instance is perhaps still more sin gular. In the Acts we have three accounts of the conversion of St Paul the first by the writer himself, the other two by St Paul in his speeches. The writer states that (ix. 4, 7) when the light shone round Paul, he fell to the ground, &quot; but the men who were journeying with him stood dumb/ St Paul himself says (xxvi. 14) that they all fell to the ground. The writer says (ix. 7) that St Paul s com panions heard the voice, but saw no one. St Paul himself says (xxii, 9) that his companions saw the light, but did not hear the voice of him who spake to him. And finally, all these accounts differ in their report of what was said on the occasion. Notwithstanding these differences, even these very accounts contain evidence in them that they were written by the same writer, and they do not destroy the force of the rest of the evidence. The case would be quite different if Baur, Schwegler, and Wittichen were right in supposing that the Gospel of Luke contained documents of opposite tendencies. It would then be necessary to assume different authors for the different parts of the Gospel, and still an other for the Acts. But this theory falls to the ground if the Tubingen theory of tendencies is rejected. The Acts itself claims to be written by a companion of St Paul. In chap. xvi. 10, the writer, without any previous warning, passes from the third person to the first. St Paul had reached the Troad. There he saw a vision inviting him to go to Macedonia. &quot; But when he saw the vision, straightway we sought to go out into Macedonia.&quot; The use of the &quot;we&quot; continues until Paul leaves Philippi. In chap. xx. Paul returns to Philippi, and the &quot; we&quot; is resumed, and is kept up till the end of the work. Irenseus (//. iii. 14, 1) quotes these passages as proof that Luke, the author, was a companion of the apostle. The minute character of the narrative, the accurate description of the various journeyings, the unimportance of some of the details, and the impossibility of contriving all the inci dents of the shipwreck without experiencing them, are strong reasons for believing that we have the narrative of an eye-witness. And if we allow this much, we can scarcely help coming to the conclusion that this eye-witness was the author of the work; for the style of this eye-witness ia exactly the style of the writer who composed the previous portions. Some have supposed that we have here the per sonal narrative of Timothy or of Silas; but this supposition would compel us to believe that the writer of the Acts was so careless as to tack documents together without remem bering to alter their form. Such a procedure on the part of the skilful writer of the Acts is unlikely in the highest degree. The &quot;we&quot; is introduced intentionally, and can be accounted for only in two ways : either by supposing that the writer was an eye-witness, or that he wished to be thought an eye-witness, and borrowed the narrative of an eye-witness to facilitate the deception. Zeller has adopted this latter alternative; and this latter alternative is the only possible one for those who assign a very late date to the Acts. We may test the writer s claim to be regarded as a com panion of St Paul by comparing his statements with those of the other books of the New Testament. As might be expected, the great facts recorded in the Gospels are repro duced accurately in the Acts. There is only one marked difference. St Matthew says (xxvii. 5, 7) that Judas cast the traitor s money into the temple, and the priests bought with it a field for the burial of strangers. St Peter in Acts (i. 18) says, that Judas himself purchased a field with the reward of his iniquity. St Matthew says that he went and hanged himself, St Peter that he fell headlong and burst in the middle. St Matthew says, or rather seems to say, that the field was called the field of blood, because it was pur chased with blood-money; St Peter seems to attribute the name to the circumstance that Judas died in it. The Acts is divided into two distinct parts. The first deals with the church in Jerusalem, and especially narrates the actions of St Peter. We have no external means of testing this portion of the narrative. The Acts is the only work from which information is got in regard to these events. The second part pursues the history of the apostle Paul ; and here we can compare the statements made in the Acts with those made in the Epistles. Now here again we have a general harmony. St Paul travels in the regions where his Epistles show that he founded churches. The friends of St Paul mentioned in the Acts are also the friends acknowledged in the Epistles. And there are j many minute coincidences. At the same time, we learn j from this comparison that St Luke is not anxious to give minute details. Timothy probably visited Athens while St Paul was there. This we learn from 1 Thess. iii. 1, but no mention is made of- this visit in the Acts. Again, we gather from the Epistles to the Corinthians that St Paul paid a visit to Corinth, which is not recorded in the Acts. Moreover, no mention is made of Titus in the Acts. These, however, are slight matters; and it must be allowed that there is a general agreement. But attention has been drawn to two remarkable exceptions. These are the ac count given by St Paul of his visits to Jerusalem in the Epistle to the Galatians and that given by St Luke; and the character and mission of the apostle Paul, as they appear in his letters and as they appear in the Acts. In regard to the first point, St Paul himself says in the Epistle to the Galatians, that after his conversion straight way he held no counsel with flesh and blood, nor did he go up to Jerusalem to the apostles who were before him; but he went away to Arabia and returned to Damascus ; that then after three years he went up to Jerusalem to seek for Cephas, and he remained with him fourteen days. He at that time saw only two apostles, Peter, and James the brother of the Lord. He then Avent away to Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by face to the churches of Judea. He says that fourteen years after this he went up to Jeru salem with Barnabas, taking Titus with him. On this occasion he went up by revelation. St Paul introduces these facts for a purpose, and this purpose is that he might prove his independence as an apostle. He had acted