for Paul. Paul is the author’s hero; his general aim is to describe the development of the Church; but his affection and his interest turn to Paul; and after a time his narrative groups itself round Paul. He is keenly concerned to show that Paul was in perfect accord with the leaders among the older Apostles, but so also was Paul himself in his letters. That is the point of view of a personal friend and disciple, full of affection, and jealous of Paul’s honour and reputation.
The characterisation of Paul in Acts is so detailed and individualised as to prove the author’s personal acquaint- ance. Moreover, the Paul of Acts is the Paul that appears to us in his own letters, in his ways and his thoughts, in his educated tone of polished courtesy, in his quick and
The Acts of the Apostles CHAP. I
vehement temper, in the extraordinary versatility and adapt- ability which made him at home in every society, moving at ease in all surroundings, and everywhere the centre of interest, whether he is the Socratic dialectician in the agora of Athens, or the rhetorician in its University, or conversing with kings and proconsuls, or advising in the council on shipboard, or cheering a broken-spirited crew to make one more effort for life. Wherever Paul is, no one present has eyes for any but him.
Such a view could not have been taken by a second century author. The Church in the second century had passed into new circumstances and was interested in quite different questions. The catastrophe of the persecution of Domitian, and the effect produced for the time on the attitude of the Church by the deliberate attempt to suppress and destroy it on the part of the imperial government, made a great gulf between the first century and the second century of Christian history.1 Though the policy of the great emperors of the second century came back to somewhat milder measures, the Church could not recover the same feeling that Paul had, so long as Christianity continued to be a proscribed religion, and a Christian was in theory at least an outlaw and a rebel. Many questions that were evidently vital to the author of Acts were buried in oblivion during the persecution of Domitian, and could not have been present in the mind of a later author. Our view classes Acts with 1 Peter, intermediate between the Pauline letters and the literature of the last decade of the century (such as Revelation). Luke shows the same attitude as Paul, but he aims at proving what Paul feels.
1 Church in R. E., Ch. XIII.
SEC 4. The Author of Acts and his Hero
The question must be fairly considered whether Luke had completed his history. There is one piece of evidence from his own hand that he had not completed it, but contemplated a third book at least. His work is divided into two books, the Gospel and the Acts, but in the opening line of the Acts he refers to the Gospel as the First discourse (πρῶτος ν λόγος) Had he not contemplated a third book, we expect the term Former Discourse (πρότερος) In a marked position like the opening of a book, we must take the word first strictly (Note, p. 27).
We shall argue that the plan of Acts has been obscured by the want of the proper climax and conclusion, which would have made it clear, and also that the author did not live to put the final touches to his second book. Perhaps we may thus account for the failure of chronological data. In Book I there are careful reckonings of dates (in one case by several different eras) at the great steps of the narrative. In Book II there are no such calculations (except the vague “under Claudius” in XI 28, in itself a striking contrast to “the fifteenth year of Tiberius,” Luke III 1). Tacitus, as we saw, appends the dates to his Agricola: Luke incorporates his dates, but they have all the appearance of being put into an already finished narrative. If other reasons prove that Acts wants the finishing touches, we may reckon among the touches that would have been added certain calculations of synchronism, which would have furnished a chronological skeleton for the narrative.
If the work was left incomplete, the reason, perhaps,. lay in the author’s martyrdom under Domitian.
5. THE TEXTS OF ACTS. It was my wish to take no notice here of differences of reading, but simply to
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follow Westcott and Hort (except in two impossible cases, XI 20, XII 25). This, however, proved impracticable; for there are some cases in which over-estimate of the two great MSS. (the Sinaitic and the Vatican) has led to the adoption of a reading that obscures history. In several places I have been driven back on the Received Text and the Authorised Version, and in others the Bezan Text either contains or gives the clue to the original text; and wherever the Bezan Text is confirmed by old Versions and by certain Greek MSS., it seems to me to deserve very earnest consideration, as at least pointing in the direction of an original reading subjected to wide-spread corruption.
It is universally admitted that the text of Acts was exposed to very careless or free handling in the second century. This came about in various ways, for the most part unintentionally, but partly by deliberate action. At that time great interest was taken in gathering from trustworthy sources supplementary information, beyond what was contained in the Gospels and Acts. Eusebius, III 39, quotes a passage from Papias describing his eager inquiries after such information from those who had come into personal relations with the Apostles, and another, V 20, from Irenaeus, describing how Polycarp used to tell of his intercourse with John and the rest that had seen the Lord. Now there was a natural tendency to note on the margin of a MS. additional information obtained on good authority about incidents mentioned in the text; and there is always a danger that such notes may be inserted in the text by a copyist, who takes them for parts accidentally omitted. There is also a certain probability that deliberate addi-
SEC. 5 The text of Acts
tions might be made to the text (as deliberate excisions are said to have been made by Marcion). The balance of evidence is, on the whole, that Mark XVI 9-20 is a later composition, designed to complete a narrative that had all the appearance of being defective. Again, explanatory notes on the margin of a MS. are often added by a reader interested in the text; there is no doubt that in some books such glosses have crept into the text through the errors of the copyist; and there are on our view three such cases at least in the generally accepted text of Acts.
But, beyond this, when translations were made into Syriac and Latin (the former certainly, the later probably, as early as the middle of the second century), the attention of scholars was necessarily directed to the difficulties in interpretation of the text, with its occasional archaic expressions, obscure words, and harsh constructions; and the practical usefulness of a simplified and modernised text was thus suggested. Tatian’s Harmony of the Four Gospels, and Marcion’s doctored editions, show how attempts were made from different points of view and in different ways to adapt the sacred narrative for popular use: Tatian changed the order, Marcion altered the text by excision or worse. Thus the plan of a simplified text was quite in keeping with the custom of the second century; and the Bezan Text seems to be of that kind. As a whole it is not Lukan: it has a fatal smoothness, it loses the rather harsh but very individual style of Luke, and it neglects some of the literary forms that Luke observed. But it has a high value for several reasons: (1) it preserves with corruptions a second-century witness to the text, and often gives valuable, and sometimes
The Acts of the Apostles CHAP. I
conclusive, evidence of readings; (2) it shows what view was held as to the meaning of various passages in the second century; (3) it adds several pieces of information which probably rest on good evidence, though they were not written by Luke. Thus we can often gather from the Bezan comment what was the original reading commented on; and it vindicates the great MSS. in XVI 12 against Dr. Hort’s conjecture. It reveals to us the first beginnings of Pauline legend (p. 106); and in this respect it stands on much the same level as the original text of the Acta of Paul and Thekla, where also it is hard to distinguish where history ends and romance begins. With the help of these two authorities,
