Part 14 (1/2)

263: Dawson Walker: ”The Gift of Tongues,” 1906, p. 181.

Important alike in its bearing upon the questions of credibility and authors.h.i.+p, is the evidence of the so-called ”we-sections.” A _prima facie_ case is made out that the author of the Acts was an eye-witness of some of the scenes it records, and a companion in travel of the Apostle Paul. This evidence has of late been greatly strengthened by linguistic investigation. While critical attempts are still made to divide the Acts into doc.u.ments, the ”we-sections” (xvi. 10-17; xx. 5-15; xxi. 1-18; xxvii. 1-xxviii. 16), as Sir J. Hawkins says, show an ”immense balance of internal and linguistic evidence in favour of the view that the original writer of these sections was the same person as the main author of the Acts and of the Third Gospel.”[264]

264: ”Horae Synopticae,” 2d ed., 1909, p. 188.

No living writers have done more to stimulate interest in the book of Acts than have Sir W. M. Ramsay and Harnack, and the writings of both have materially strengthened the case alike for its Lukan authors.h.i.+p, and, in the main, for its historical accuracy. Ramsay, starting, as he says, from the standpoint of the Tubingen school, ”with the confident a.s.sumption that the book was fabricated in the middle of the second century, and studying it to see what light it could throw on the state of society in Asia Minor, was gradually driven to the conclusion that it must have been written in the first century and with admirable knowledge.”[265]

265: ”Pauline Studies,” p. 199.

Harnack's defense, in his four monographs,[266] of the Lukan authors.h.i.+p, integrity, historical reliability (where the supernatural is not in question) and early date of the Acts is the most outstanding and significant achievement of the age in New Testament criticism. Harnack's work has been so thorough and convincing that it may be said to have carried the theological world by storm. At least his powerful argument for Lukan authors.h.i.+p does not appear to have been successfully met. The attempt to turn its flank by a.s.serting that the Paul of Acts, in making a vow, shaving his head and entering into the Temple, was not the defender of Gentile liberty who wrote Galatians, and so that the author of the Acts was not the companion of Paul, is met by Harnack in the fourth of his monographs. Paul, he declares, not only was a Jew, but remained so, whether consistently or not. Harnack thinks that Paul shrank back from taking the last logical step,[267] but that in this the author of the Acts represents the relation of Paul to Judaism precisely as do his letters.[268] Stanton well remarks that the difficulty of accounting for alleged discrepancies between the Acts and the Epistles is equal or greater on the supposition that the author wrote 100 A. D., or later, than if the author was the companion of Paul.[269] The very fact, for example, that Luke says that Paul wors.h.i.+pped in the Temple is an indication that we have here no conception of a later age to which such an act would have seemed unnatural.

266: ”Beitrage zur Einl. in das N. T.”: I. ”Lukas der Arzt,” 1906; II. ”Spruche und Reden Jesu,” 1907; III. ”Die Apostelgeschichte,”

1908; IV. ”Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte und zur Abfa.s.sungszeit des Synoptischen Evangelien,” 1911. For convenience these will be alluded to as I, II, III, and IV, in connection with the English translation.

267: IV, p. 35; ”Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels,” p. 49.

268: _Ibid._, p. 62; E. T., p. 88.

269: ”The Gospels as Historical Doc.u.ments,” Pt. II, 1909, p. 242.

In his ”Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels” (IV), Harnack reverses his former opinion and strongly defends a date for the Acts within the lifetime of Paul and before the end of his trial at Rome.

Reviewing his former arguments for a later date, he finds them inconclusive, and thinks that the earlier date is required by the abrupt close of the Acts. Minor considerations favouring an early date are (1) the t.i.tles for Christ in the early chapters, and for Christians, and the description of the Jews as ”the people of G.o.d”; (2) the fact that the Jews are the persecutors and not the persecuted; (3) the absence of any indication of the use of Paul's letters such as would be expected in a later writer; (4) the use of the ”first day of the week,” instead of the ”Lord's Day,” and of the names of Jewish feasts, in which Luke stands with Paul against later writers. And (5) even the prediction, Acts xx.

25, which looks primarily to Jerusalem, not Rome, would not have been written, if the second imprisonment be accepted, after its apparent falsification by I Timothy i. 3 and 2 Timothy i. 18. H. Koch develops these arguments independently,[270] and it can no longer be said that the early dating of the Acts is ”a pre-critical theory which rests on sentimental or subjective grounds.”[271]

270: ”Die Abfa.s.sungszeit des lukanischen Geschichtswerkes,” 1911.

271: J. Moffatt: ”Historical New Testament,” p. 414, note 4. It is noticeable that Moffatt now favours the Lukan authors.h.i.+p, ”put practically beyond doubt by the exhaustive researches of Hawkins and Harnack” (”Introduction to New Testament,” p. 295), while advocating a date later than Josephus' ”Antiquities” (pp. 29 f.).

Why should the author follow so carefully the fortunes of the Apostle on his voyage to Rome, and describe so fully the initial stages of his trial, and yet leave the reader in doubt concerning its outcome?

Commentators have been puzzled by the seemingly inordinate s.p.a.ce which Luke devotes to the details of the voyage and s.h.i.+pwreck. Sometimes it is said that the voyage marks the final rejection of the Jewish people; or in the description is seen a literary device intended to intensify the suspense of the reader; or allegorical interpretations are resorted to by those who think that Luke would not thus descend from the level of the philosophical historian to that of the novelist.

In the minute description of the voyage and s.h.i.+pwreck, Koch sees evidence that the writer's experiences as Paul's companion on the voyage were still fresh in his mind. The details would scarcely have been remembered and recorded so vividly after twenty-five years. Even if a journal had been kept, it is still strange that the minutiae of the story should have been retained in the perspective of the finished history. ”The author still stands under the fresh impression of the wonderful divine guidance through which Paul, in spite of all dangers and hindrances, reached his long sought goal.” ”What interest would a reader of later times have in details such as that on an Alexandrian s.h.i.+p precisely two hundred and seventy-six men were found?” In the seventh or eighth decade more important contemporary events would have stood in the foreground of interest.[272] A striking parallelism has been observed between the Third Gospel and the Acts, while, supposing Paul's death to have occurred, it is urged that Luke has missed ”the finest--the most essential--point of the whole comparison, the death of Paul.”[273]

272: H. Koch: ”Die Abfa.s.sungszeit des lukanischen Geschichtswerkes,”

pp. 61, 62.

273: D. Walker: ”The Gift of Tongues,” p. 228.

The a.s.sumed intention of the author to write a third treatise does not help the matter much. It is absurd, Ramsay admits, to relate the earlier stages of the trial at great length, ”and wholly omit the final result which gives them intelligibility and purpose”; but his conclusion is that ”it therefore follows that a sequel was contemplated by the author,” a sequel which the ”first” (protos) of Acts i. 1 implies, if Luke ”wrote as correct Greek as Paul wrote.”[274] But the intention of writing a sequel does not explain the failure to mention the outcome of the trial. Luke would have no motive like the writer of a continued story for keeping the reader in suspense, and the simple addition of the words ”until his release or acquittal” would have relieved the suspense, and given ”intelligibility and purpose” to the detailed description of the earlier stages of the trial. The account of the Ascension is not omitted from Luke's Gospel although given in greater detail in the Acts.

There is nothing un-philosophical in the abrupt ending of a history which brings the record down to the date of writing.

274: ”Paul the Traveller,” pp. 307-309. The use of ”first” (p??tos [protos]) is not decisive, for it is used where there are but two objects in the comparison in Acts xii. 10 (and see vii. 12), Hebrews ix. 8 and 15, Apoc. xx. 5, and even I Corinthians xv. 47.

The leading argument against an early date for the Acts is drawn from the possible use by Luke of the writings of Josephus, and the crux of the question is in the words put into the mouth of Gamaliel (Acts v. 36, 37). The coincidence of the names of Theudas and Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 36, 37; Antiq. xx. v. 1 and 2) is striking and, if the two men named Theudas be identified and Josephus is correct, Luke is guilty of an anachronism in putting an allusion to him into the mouth of Gamaliel; for the Theudas of Josephus falls in the time of Fadus who was procurator under Claudius, about 45 A. D. The following points deserve to be noticed:

(1) Luke had from Paul, whether or not Paul was present at the meeting of the Sanhedrin, the best means of knowing what Gamaliel, his teacher and the spokesman of the Pharisaic party, actually said. (2) The a.s.sumption that Luke was quoting Josephus is in itself very difficult when we compare the pa.s.sages. Luke speaks of about four hundred under Theudas while Josephus mentions a great part of the people; Luke speaks of Judas while Josephus speaks of the sons of Judas. To quote thus loosely from his a.s.sumed authority and then to commit the further blunder of making Gamaliel allude to an event which occurred at least a dozen years later is, while possible, strangely out of keeping with Luke's proved care and accuracy in most of his historical allusions. The difficulty is acknowledged by those who make Luke dependent on Josephus.

Why did Luke diverge from a correct narrative if he had one before him?