ACTS
OF
THE
writer lias reached a climax. “ He wished,” as Harnack well remarks, “ to point out the might of the Holy Spirit in the apostles, Christ’s witnesses; and to show how this might carried the Gospel from Jerusalem to Home and gained for it entrance into the pagan world, whilst the Jews in growing degree incurred rejection. In keeping with this, verses 26-28 of chapter xxviii. are the solemn closing verses of the work. But verses 30, 31 are an appended observation.” So far, so good; but objection may be taken when Harnack goes on to say that this observation does not admit of explanation from the plan of the work, “ but rather from the almost independent interest which, not so much the life of Paul, as the marvellous manner of the realization of Paul’s journey to Poome had incidentally acquired for the author.” To many it will seem that the writer is ending up most fitly on one of his keynotes, in that he leaves Paul preaching in Rome itself, “ unmolested.” The full force of this is missed by those who, while rejecting the idea that the author had in reserve enough Pauline history to furnish another work, yet hold that Paul was freed from the imprisonment amid which Acts leaves him.1 But for those, on the other hand, who see in the writer’s own words in xx. 38, uncontradicted by anything in the sequel, a broad hint that Paul never saw his Ephesian friends again, the natural view is open that the sequel to the two years’ preaching was too notorious to call for explicit record. Nor would such silence touching Paul’s speedy martyrdom be disingenuous, any more than on the theory that martyrdom overtook him several years later. Our author would view Paul’s death as a mere exception to the rule of Roman policy heretofore illustrated, due to the influence of a sort of madman, such as Nero was naturally held to be in the latter part of his reign. Not even by the Roman authorities were some of his acts regarded as precedents ; and so our author could honestly refrain from recording what he viewed as a mere freak of Neronian caprice, especially as it would be already known to his contemporaries. Such silence would be the more natural if he were writing in Rome, a conclusion to which certain things are often thought to point. Date.—External evidence now points to the existence of Acts at least as early as the opening years of the 2nd century. As evidence for the Third Gospel holds almost equally for Acts, its existence in Marcion’s day (120-140) is now assured. Further, the traces of it in Polycarp 2 and Ignatius,3 when taken together, are highly probable. And what is still more important, it is probable that Acts was already known in Rome by c. a.d. 96. For it is widely admitted that the resemblance of Acts xiii. 22, and 1 Clem, xviii. 1, in features not found in the Psalm (Ixxxix. 20) quoted by each, cannot be accidental. Acts xiii. 22. 1 Clem, xviii. 1. r ijyeipev rbv AaveLd . . . $ ko.1 Tt bt eiirupev i-rri rip pepapelirev /xapTvp'ticras, Hilipov AaveiS Tvpppevq) Aaveid ; irpbs 8v ehrev roi' rod ’lecrcroi, dvdpa Kara ttjv 6 debs, Yibpov avdpa Kara. T7)v Ka.pdLai' p.ov [dvdpa k.t.X. from 1 KapdLav pov, Aaveid top tov Sam. xiii. 14, (Lvdpwirov /c.r.X.]. ’Tecrcrac, iv eeei aiuv'up ^xptcnx avrbv. Here the Greek Bible has simply Enpov AaveiS rov 8ovX6v [iov. Nor should the reference in either case to David as a man witnessed to by God, be overlooked, tending as it does to exclude the idea that the likeness 1 Unless we arbitrarily separate (in the face of the ancient Latin version) eiri to reppa rps buaeojs iXdthv, from Kai paprup-qaas eiri tGjv rjyepbvuv outcjs dinjXXdyTj tov Koapov, 1 Clement v. 7 gives no support to this idea ; while the next chapter seems clearly to put Paul’s death not2 later than the Neronian persecution of a.d. 64. Polyc. ad Philipp, i. 2, Acts ii. 24 ; ii. 1, Acts x. 42 ; ii. 3, Acts xx. 35 ; vi. 3, Acts vii. 52. 3 Ign. ad Magn. v. 1, Acts i. 25 ; ad Smyrn. iii. 3, Acts x. 41.
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between the passages is due to some third source. The dependence seems clearly to be on the side of 1 Clement, especially in view of possible echoes of Acts xx. 35, which it contains in three distinct places (ii. 1, xiii. 1, xlvi. 7, cf. Polyc. ii. 3). There is, then, high probability that Acts was current in Antioch and Smyrna not later than c. a.d. 115, and in Rome as early c. a.d. 96. With this view internal evidence agrees. In spite of Blass’ advocacy of a date prior to a.d. 70, the bulk of critical opinion puts this theory firmly aside. Thus the prologue to the Gospel of which Acts is the sequel, already implies the dying out of the generation of eye-witnesses as a body. Of recent years, too, the relations of Church and Empire have been brought to bear, especially by Ramsay. And his dating, a.d. 81 or soon after, fits in with a strong consensus of critical opinion both in England and abroad—Harnack, for instance, placing Acts between 80 and 93, while Zahn prefers 75 to 80. So that a.d. 80 may be taken as a fair average date, while any year between it and 71 is open. Of the reasons for a date in one of the earlier decades of the second century, as argued by the Tubingen school and its heirs, several are now really untenable. Among these are the supposed traces of 2nd-century gnosticism and “ hierarchical ” ideas of organization; but especially the argument from the relation of the Roman state to the Christians, which Ramsay has completely reversed and turned into proof of an origin prior to Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan on the subject. Another fact, now generally admitted, renders a 2nd-century date yet more incredible; and that is, the failure of a writer devoted to Paul’s memory to make palpable use of his Epistles. Instead of this he writes in a fashion that seems to traverse certain facts recorded in them. If, indeed, it were proved that Acts uses the later works of Josephus, we should have to pi ace the book about a.d. 100. But this is far from being the case, a critic like Harnack decisively rejecting the alleged dependence. Sources.—So far from the recognition of a plan in Acts being in itself inimical to a serious quest after the materials used in its composition, one may say that it points the way thereto, while it keeps the literary analysis within scientific limits. Thus the more one realizes the theological standpoint of the mind pervading the book as a whole, the more one feels that the speeches in the first part of Acts— and indeed elsewhere, too—are not “ free compositions ” of our author, the outcome of dramatic idealization such as ancient historians like Thucydides or Polybius allowed themselves. The Christology, for instance, of the early Petrine speeches is such as a Gentile Christian writing c. 80 a.d. simply could not have imagined, even had the idea of adopting Judseo-Christian categories been present to his mind. Thus we are forced to assume the use of a certain amount of early Judaeo - Christian material, analogous to that implied also in the special parts of the Third Gospel. One critic, at least, Paul Feine (Dine vorkanonische Veberlieferung des Lukas, 1891), suggests that a single document explains this material in both works, as far as Acts xii.; while others maintain that more than one such source underlies Acts i.-xii., or even i.-xv. {e.g., a source embodying the traditions of the largely Gentile Church of Antioch). Yet if our author was an Antiochene and a careful inquirer (Luke i. 3), this may explain all. It cannot, indeed, be said that definite results have here been attained as yet. But the study is a new one, and the resources of analysis, the linguistic in particular, are by no means exhausted. One important analogy for the way in which one author may be supposed to have handled his sources exists; and that is the manner in which he uses Mark’s narrative in compiling his own Gospel
