and in most of the speeches (e.g. xiv. 15-17 ) there is a
varied appropriateness as well as an allusiveness, pointing to
good information (see under Sources). There is no evidence
that any speech in Acts is the free composition of its author,
without either written or oral basis; and in general he seems
more conscientious than most ancient historians touching the
essentials of historical accuracy, even as now understood.
Miracles. Objections to the trustworthiness of Acts on the
ground of its miracles require to be stated more discriminately
than has sometimes been the case. Particularly is this so
as regards the question of authorship. As Harnack observes
(Lukas der Arzt, p. 24), the ``miraculous'' or supernormal
element is hardly, if at all, less marked in the ``we''
sections, which are substantially the witness of a companion
of Paul (and where efforts to dissect out the miracles are
fruitless), than in the rest of the work. The scientific
method, then, is to consider each ``miracle'' on its own merits,
according as we find reason to suppose that it has reached our
author more or less directly. But the record of miracle as
such cannot prejudice the question of authorship. Even the
form in which the gift of Tongues at Pentecost is conceived
does not tell against a companion of Paul, since it may have
stood in his source, and the first outpouring of the Messianic
Spirit may soon have come to be thought of as unique in some
respects, parallel in fact to the Rabbinic tradition as to
the inauguration of the Old Covenant at Sinai (cf. Philo, De
decem oraculis, 9, 11, and the Midrash on Ps. lxviii. 11).
Finally as to such historical difficulties in Acts as still
perplex the student of the Apostolic age, one must remember
the possibilities of mistake intervening between the facts
and the accounts reaching its author, at second or even third
hand. Yet it must be strongly emphasized, that recent historical
research at the hands of experts in classical antiquity has
tended steadily to verify such parts of the narrative as it can
test, especially those connected with Paul's missions in the Roman
Empire. That is no new result; but it has come to light in
greater degree of recent years, notably through Sir W. M. Ramsay's
researches. The proofs of trustworthiness extend also to the
theological sphere. What was said above of the Christology
of the Petrine speeches applies to the whole conception of
Messianic salvation, the eschatology, the idea of Jesus as
equipped by the Holy Spirit for His Messianic work, found in
these speeches, as also to titles like ``Jesus the Nazarene''
and ``the Righteous One'' both in and beyond the Petrine
speeches. These and other cases in which we are led to
discern very primitive witness behind Acts, do not indeed
give to such witness the value of shorthand notes or even of
abstracts based thereon. But they do support the theory that
our author meant to give an unvarnished account of such words
and deeds as had come to his knowledge. The perspective of
the whole is no doubt his own; and as his witnesses probably
furnished but few hints for a continuous narrative, this
perspective, especially in things chronological, may sometimes be
faulty. Yet when one remembers that by 70-80 A.D. it must
have been a matter of small interest by what tentative stages
the Messianic salvation first extended to the Gentiles, it
is surely surprising that Acts enters into such detail
on the subject, and is not content with a summary account
of the matter such as the mere logic of the subject would
naturally suggest. In any case, the very difference of the
perspective of Acts and of Galatians, in recording the
same epochs in Paul's history, argues such an independence
in the former as is compatible only with an early date.
Quellenkritik, then, a distinctive feature of recent
research upon Acts, solves many difficulties in the way
of treating it as an honest narrative by a companion of
Paul. In addition, we may also count among recent gains
a juster method of judging such a book. For among the
results of the Tubingen criticism was what Dr W. Sanday
calls ``an unreal and artificial standard, the standard of
the 19th century rather than the 1st, of Germany rather than
Palestine, of the lamp and the study rather than of active
life.'' This has a bearing, for instance, on the differences
between the three accounts of Paul's conversion in Acts.
In the recovery of a more real standard, we owe much to
men like Mommsen, Ramsay, Blass and Harnack, trained amid
other methods and traditions than those which had brought
the constructive study of Acts almost to a deadlock.
5. 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 equally
for Acts, its existence in Marcion's day (120-140) is now
assured. Further, the traces of it in Polycarp 6 and Ignatius
7 when taken together, are highly probable; and it is even
widely admitted that the resemblance of Acts xiii. 22, and 1
Cicm. xviii. 1, in features not found in the Psalm (lxxxix.
20) quoted by each, can hardly be accidental. That is, Acts
was probably current in Antioch and Smyrna not later than c.
A.D. 115, and perhaps in Rome as early as c. A.D. 96.
With this view internal evidence agrees. In spite of some
advocacy of a date prior to A.D. 70, the bulk of critical
opinion is decidedly against it. The prologue to Luke's Gospel
itself implies the dying out of the generation of eye-witnesses
as a class. A strong consensus of opinion supports a date
about A.D. 80; some prefer 75 to 80; while a date between
70 and 75 seems no less possible. Of the reasons for a
date in one of the earlier decades of the 2nd century, as
argued by the Tubingen school and its heirs, several are now
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 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 things recorded in
them. If, indeed, it were proved that Acts uses the
later works of Josephus, we should have to place the book
about A.D. 100. But this is far from being the case.
Three points of contact with Josephus in particular are cited.
(1) The circumstances attending the death of Herod Agrippa
I. in A.D. 44. Here Acts xii. 21-23 is largely parallel to
Jos. Antt. xix. 8. 2; but the latter adds an omen of coming
doom, while Acts alone gives a circumstantial account of the
occasion of Herod's public appearance. Hence the parallel,
when analysed, tells against dependence on Josephus. So
also with (2) the cause of the Egyptian pseudo-prophet in
Acts xxi. 37, f., Jos. Jewish War, ii. 13. 5, Antt. xx.
8. 6; for the numbers of his followers do not agree with
either of Josephus's rather divergent accounts, while Acts
alone calls them Sicarii. With these instances in mind, it
is natural to regard (3) the curious resemblance as to the
(non-historical) order in which Theudas and Judas of Galilee
are referred to in both as accidental, the more so that again
there is difference as to numbers. Further, to make out
a case for dependence at all, one must assume the mistaken
order (as it may be) in Gamaliel's speech as due to gross
carelessness in the author of Acts--an hypothesis unlikely in
itself. Such a mistake was far more likely to arise in oral
transmission of the speech, before it reached Luke at all.
6 Place.---The place of composition is still an open
question. For some time Rome and Antioch have been in favour;
and Blass combined both views in his theory of two editions
(see below, Text). But internal evidence points strongly to
the Roman province of Asia, particularly the neighbourhood of
Ephesus. Note the confident local allusion in xix. 9 to ``the
school of Tyrannus''---not ``a certain Tyrannus,'' as in the
inferior text--and in xix. 33 to ``Alexander''; also the very
minute topography in xx. 13-15. At any rate affairs in that
region, including the future of the church of Ephesus (xx.
28-30), are treated as though they would specially interest
``Theophilus'' and his circle; also an early tradition makes
Luke die in the adjacent Bithynia. Finally it was in this
region that there arose certain early glosses e.g. on
xix. 9, xx. 15), probably the earliest of those referred to
below. How fully in correspondeoce with such an environment
the work would be, as apologia for the Church against
the Synagogue's attempts to influence Roman policy to its
harm, must be clear to all familiar with the strength of
Judaism in ``Asia'' (cf. Rev. ii. 9, iii. 9, and see Sir W.
M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches, ch. xii.).
7. Text.---The apparatus criticus of Acts has grown
considerably of recent years; yet mainly in one direction,
that of the so-called ``Western text.'' This term, which our
growing knowledge, especially of the Syriac and other Eastern
versions, is rendering more and more unsatisfactory, stands
for a text which used to be connected almost exclusively with
the ``eccentric'' Codex Bezae, and is comparable to a
Targum on an Old Testament book. But it is now recognized
to have been very widespread, in both east and west, for
some 200 years or more from as early as the middle of the 2nd
century. The process, however, of sitting out the readings of
all our present witnesses--(Aleph MSS.), versions, Fathers
--has not yet gone far enough to yield any sure or final result
as to the history of this text, so as to show what in its extant
forms is primary, secondary, and so on. Beginnings have been
made towards grouping our authorities; but the work must go
on much further before a solid basis for the reconstruction
of its primitive form can be said to exist. The attempts
made at such a reconstruction, as by Blass (1895, 1897) and
Hilgenfeld (1899), are quite arbitrary. The like must be said
even of the contribution to the problem made by August Pott,8
though he has helped to define one condition of success---the
classification of the strata in ``Western'' texts---and has
taken some steps in the right direction, in connexion with
the complex phenomena of one witness, the Harklean Syriac.
Assuming, however, that the original form of the ``Western''
text had been reached, the question of its historical value,
i.e. its relation to the original text of Acts, would yet
remain. On this point the highest claims have been made by
Blass. Ever since 1894 he held that both the ``Western''
text of Acts (which he styles the b text) and its rival,
the text of the great uncials (which he styles the a text),
are due to the author's own hand. Further, that the former
(Roman) is the more original of the two, being related to the
latter (Antiochene) as fuller first draft to severely pruned
copy. But even in its later form, that ``b stands nearer
the Grundschrift than a, but yet is, like a, a copy
from it,'' the theory is really untenable. In sober contrast
of Blass's sweeping theory stand the views of Sir W. M.
Ramsay. Already in The Church in the Roman Empire ( 1893
) he held that the Codex Bezae rested on a recension made
in Asia Minor (somewhere between Ephesus and S. Galatia),
