For the recent hypotheses on the composite origin of the book, cp. below in the Appendix. These do not seriously affect the question of its date as a literary unity; nor does the ingenious theory of Blass, according to which our Codex Bezae (in Acts) was a first rough draft (R) of the work whose later and revised form (A) is extant in our present Acts. The latter text is condensed, the Western text much fuller. The reason of this is, in Blass's view, that Luke, being a poor man, would be obliged to do his own copying; and in writing out a copy of his work for Theophilus he would naturally feel the tendency, common to such situations, to abbreviate, or to omit here and there clauses and paragraphs. Even if this were so, the double recension would be practically synchronous.

Broadly speaking, the relative position of Acts in the series of NT documents lies between Luke's gospel and the fourth gospel, earlier at any rate than the pastorals, and possibly somewhere in the last quarter or even in the last decade of the first century A.D. Harnack (Chron. pp. 246-250) inclines to the period 80-93; similarly, but with hesitation, Lightfoot, Smith's Dic. B2 (1893), i. pp. 25-42. At all events, it cannot be earlier. If Josephus is used in Acts, the latter's date would be of course subsequent to 93-94 A.D. The proofs of such an indebtedness, however, are not convincing, and have not yet been established with certainty. Evidence for its use by Clem. Rom. is unfortunately as indecisive. At the other extreme there is even less evidence to support the hypothesis that the book-like the 8th book of Thucydides-was left unfinished at its author's death, or that the book ended because at the moment of its completion (c. 62) the writer had no more to tell. This is a pure guess, which depends upon the further hypothesis, equally incapable of proof, that the author intended to write a full account of Paul's life so far as he knew it. Similarly, the failure to notice Peter's residence at Rome (1 P 513), supposing that his letter was known to the author of Acts, is explicable enough when we remember that the fact probably fell outside the timelimits of the history, even if it were granted that he would have cared to mention it or Peter's death at all.

Upon the other side, if it can be shown that the Pauline letters did not form a source for Acts, this makes an argument in favour of a firstcentury date, as after 90 A.D.-to judge from the sub-apostolic literature— the knowledge of these letters became widespread. The point is still in dispute. But upon the whole Acts does not show any definite traces of the Pauline epistles such as are plentiful in Barnabas, Ignatius, etc. The main reason for adopting this view is the total silence of Acts upon the Pauline epistles, even at points where their mention would have been natural, or where the slightest acquaintance with their contents would have either prevented the historian from misconceiving the situation, or given him a fuller narrative (see the ample evidence collected by Zahn, Einl. ii. p. 408 f.). The author of Acts might indeed have

1 On the relation of Josephus to the NT generally and Acts in particular, cp. above, p. 271, and Clemen's full note (Chron, pp. 66-69). Like Wendt, the latter is disposed to assume that the editor of Acts was acquainted with Josephus (cp. also SK, 1895, p. 339 f.). On the other hand, Ramsay's arguments are very damaging to such a theory (Was Christ born at Bethlehem? pp. 251-259), and Knowling has some acute objections in ExGT, ii. pp. 30-34. So J. A. Cross, Exp. Ti. xi. pp. 538-540.

To the author of Acts as to Justin Martyr it seems the prerogative of the Twelve to be the primary channel for God's mission to the world. Both writers reproduce this conventional idea, though the original Pauline sources at the disposal of the former must have pointed to a rather different conception of affairs.

known Paul's letters. There is nothing in his age or situation that we know of, to have prevented such an acquaintance. But, so far as the contents of Acts permit us to judge, the evidence negative and positive alike tells against any serious literary use of the apostle's writings. Such knowledge of Paul's movements as the book contains was probably drawn either from written sources, like the we-journal, or from oral traditions; and there is a possibility that the latter may have included Paul's own reminiscences. Harnack (Chron. p. 248 f.), Zahn (op. cit.), Weiss, Felten, Schmidt, Jülicher, McGiffert, Bartlet, Knowling, Wendt, and Sabatier (in an essay published in the Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des hautes études, Sciences religieuses, 1. 1889, p. 202 f.), besides adherents of Steck's theory (ZSchz, 1890, 153 f.), substantially take up this position, that the Pauline letters do not form a source for Acts. It is naturally axiomatic for the recent school who regard the latter as the basis for the former. Otherwise, one must imagine that Acts presupposes and is meant to illuminate the epistles (e.g. Ramsay, SPT, p. 385), a position which is not very tenable in face of recent critical developments. In fact, when the aim of Acts is rightly conceived, the alternative is either (i.) to suppose that the author knew but had largely forgotten Paul's epistles; or to admit (ii.) that the book silently contradicts them, going upon its own independent and erroneous road. The former is hardly credible, least of all when the author is held to be Luke, Paul's companion and the diligent investigator who wrote the third gospel. Nor can Overbeck's intermediate suggestion be accepted, that the author knew the extant Pauline epistles, but never employed them as sources for his work. Such a procedure would argue a far from "intense interest in Paul and Paulinism" (Overbeck - Zeller, i. 64). More logical and natural would be (ii.) the latter hypothesis, which practically formed a postulate of the older Tübingen critics (so still Schmiedel, EBi, i. pp. 42, 43), and is still held by several (e.g. Jacobsen, Clemen, and Spitta) analysts of Acts, as well as by others (Holtzmann, Pfleiderer, and Weizsäcker in particular) from a different standpoint. Such a hypothesis of course indefinitely lowers one's estimate of the author's historicity and trustworthiness, but at any rate it does more justice to the facts of all the writings concerned than the "supplementary" hypothesis above alluded to (cp. Schulze, SK, 1900, pp. 119-124, on Ac 2018-31), if any literary relation is to be presupposed.

The recent expansion of the church in the years 60-80 naturally produced an unwonted and growing self-consciousness. If the gospels witness to her intense practical desire for possessing some historical basis of the faith in the life and sayings of Jesus, the book of Acts affords evidence that this reflective and retrospective attitude extended to the province of her own history - which was indeed viewed as a natural continuation of Christ's activity (Ac 11-5). In the last quarter of the century it is plain that this interest in herself had deepened. An eagerness to take cognisance of the past was abroad throughout the church. The book of Acts, one may be sure, was no mere jeu d'esprit. Its characteristics-even the pro-Roman and anti-Jewish tendencies, as the gospel of Peter indicates-are not those of an isolated thinker who occupied a novel or independent standpoint. The composition of the work was prompted, just as its character was largely determined, by the spirit of the age; and that spirit included the tendency to look back and inquire into those processes and crises through which the church had reached her present and fairly definite condition, into the origin of her organisation, institutions, and doctrines, her relation

to OT prophecy and contemporary Judaism, her attitude under persecutions and towards errors, her debt to the twelve apostles and early leaders, and in general the bases and guarantees which the status quo towards the close of the first century possessed, in the acts and authority of the primitive community. To the feeling of historical sympathy with this creative and heroic age, as well as to the sources with which the author worked, is due the attractive element of the book. "Les Actes des Apôtres, expression de ce premier élan de la conscience chrétienne, sont un livre de joie, d'ardeur sereine. Depuis les poemes homériques, on n'avait pas vu d'oeuvre pleine de sensations aussi fraîches. Une brise matinale, une odeur de mer, pénètre tout le livre. Ce fut la seconde poésie du christianisme. Le lac de Tibériade et ses barques de pêcheurs avaient fourni la première" (Renan).

Gathering up the various traces and tendencies which have been already indicated, we may say that the period to which the book is with great probability to be referred, is the middle period of Domitian's reign.3 The history then becomes an implicit apology for the Christian faith. The author intends to show by his picture of early church history the friendly attitude of the Roman officials to the Pauline generation, their recognition and protection of Paul, the emancipation of Christianity from its primitive Judaic surroundings (note the weighty repetition, 13461 1861 199), as well as its imperial aim. It is written in view of Imperial interference and Judaistic propaganda. Against both of these contemporary currents the writer seeks to vindicate the innocence, independence, and superiority of the Christian faith. Yet, after all, the supreme interest in his mind is religious. Writing for a generation which had only memories of the great apostles who had laid here and there the foundations of their church, he aimed at establishing their faith by a transcript of the stages through which-as it appeared to him-the living spirit of Jesus had achieved this result.*

1 Acts, like the other NT writings after 70 A.D., points to the developing selfconsciousness of the church along two lines. (i.) The detachment of the Christian society from the outward and ancestral framework of Judaism gave a new sense of freedom, of the church's right and need of self-government, of its prospects and career as God's kingdom. (ii.) The rivalry of Judaism brought to light with increasing clearness the Divine mission of the church. While it compelled Christians to vindicate their OT prerogatives and right of succession, it opened to them a truer insight into the eternal purpose of God which was to find its fulfilment through Jesus Christ among Christians. These ideas constitute the dominant tendency under which Acts was composed. It was an attempt not so much to justify the Gentile Christianity of the author and his time, which was already on the way to catholicism, as to justify an existing and incipient stage of catholicism which was practically equivalent to Gentile Christianity. Cp. Kattenbusch, das Apost. Symbol. ii. 494 f.

2 Harnack, IID, i. pp. 158 f., 213 f. The words of 432 (roû dì xàźbouS TÃY TIOTEUSKYTNY ĥy napdía nad Juxò uia) "may be regarded as forming a motto for the book " (Schmiedel). And how suggestive is the fact that the author of a gospel wrote as its natural sequel an apostolic history! See Bacon's excellent treatment of both books (INT, pp. 218f.) 3 On the recrudescence of persecution under the "timid and inhuman Domitian," cp. Renan, Les Évangiles, chaps. xii., xiv. ; and below, pp. 460, 461.

4 Hence, e.g., the absorption in Paul which marks the latter part of the book. It is his arrival, not that of the gospel, in Rome that forms the apex of the history. Christianity had preceded him there, but that is not the book's concern. To the writer (or writers) of the sources, especially of the we-journal, Paul was interesting as a personality. Memory and affection bound him to them. But to the editor of the book Paul was chiefly a type of the Christianity which existed around him and his readers. The apostles represented their faith in its original Jewish correctness, in its ultimate superiority, in its rightful vindication before the Roman authorities, and especially in its Divine sanction and impulse for universal diffusion.

1

As a historical document, not merely for the period 75-100 but directly for much within the age of which it treats, Acts is a most serviceable and invaluable writing. For many parts of the apostolic age the author apparently possessed no sources and had access to few traditions. The result is that some parts are omitted, while in elaborating others he seems again to present a record at variance with the traits preserved in Paul's epistles. Yet even with the gaps, deviations, and contradictions of this history, it serves often as a useful outline for historical research, providing materials for the reconstruction of events and ideas which otherwise would remain even more dim than they now are. As Resch, I think, has somewhere observed with considerable truth, apart from the "Acts of the Apostles," the epistolary literature of the NT would be like a book sealed with seven seals. One may well admit this, without denying at the same time that in the history of early Christianity there are several points where the narrative, when inferentially gathered from the Pauline letters, gains in clearness and consistency as Acts is either set aside or regarded as a secondary source. [Mommsen, ZNW, 1901, p. 87 f.]

The following analysis has been adapted from Mr. C. H. Turner's article (DB, i. pp. 412 f., "the picture is cut up, as it were, into six panels, each labelled with a general summary of progress ").

1 Note the presence of such elements as these in the contemporary situation : (i.) a conciliatory tendency towards emphasis upon harmony and agreement as notes of the earlier development (cp. Ephesians, and the supremacy of the Twelve in the Apocalypse, where Paul is absolutely ignored, even in his famous sphere at Ephesus); (ii) a disposition to smooth over primitive conflicts in the interests of a later generation which would not be edified by their recital; (iii.) the existence of errorists and incipient officialism (e.g., especially Ac 2028-31 = Pastorals and Apoc 2-3, 21-9) in the Asiatic communities; (iv.) the blurred reflection (in the Pauline speeches, as in 1 Pet.) of Paul's ideas upon, e.g., Christ's redemption, Israel's destiny, the spiritual life, the charismata, his independent apostolate, etc.; besides (v.) the less restrained handling of stories such as those told in Ac 116. etc. On the latter passage, see Prof. Rendel Harris (AJT, July, 1900, pp. 490-513), who attempts to show that behind it, and even behind the corresponding story in Mt 273, there lay in the primitive tradition a legendary account of the death of Judas, modelled upon the tale of a similar fate suffered by Nadan, the traitorous nephew of Ahikar. The taste for such heightened anecdotes naturally rose in proportion as their original nucleus receded in tradition. It is more noticeable in Acts than in the synoptic gospels (cp. above, pp. 17-18; also, for other instances of naïvely realistic expressions of religious truth in primitive Christianity, Gunkel's die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes,2 pp. 47-49); though, even in the pictured pages of the former book, few sections would deserve a verdict as severe as that pronounced by Dr. Harris on the Judas-legends: "in any case, the value of the early Christian traditions with regard to the death of the traitor is reduced almost to zero.' (Story of Ahikar, pp. lxiii-lxv: "We need not be surprised if Ahikar should furnish the key to the genesis of the Judas legends,' cp. Cheyne, EBi, ii. 2627, whose article is rather disfigured, however, by conjectural emendations of the text.) That the author of Acts stood in an honest and simple attitude to the facts which he wished to narrate, we need not question. His intentions are as excellent as is the general result of his effort. Thus he refrains from introducing into his narrative of the primitive church the later Trinitarian formula of baptism (Mt 2816-20), just as in the third gospel he permits no reference to the sin of polytheism (so common in the epistles), since that did not form a sin of Christ's circle in Judaea, or to the pre-existence-idea of Christ's person. Evidences of this historic sense might be indefinitely multiplied (ep. p. 268, n. 2). But all this only illustrates more vividly the inferior elements ("misconceptions and legendary deposits," Beyschlag, NTTh, i. 301, ii. 6) in the materials at his disposal, his own inadequacy at several points to the task of exhibiting the course of events, and the tendency which operated in his mind. The last-named is as marked in Acts as in the Eumenides. An undivided church drawn from divided humanity forms the pride and topic of Ephesians, Acts, and the Apocalypse.

[85-95 A.D.]

ACTS

It is certain that in the second part the person and fortunes of Paul are supremely prominent, but it is just as plain that upon the whole "Acts" is intended to describe something other than the life of Paul. The author regards Paul as the representative of the cause which he himself is advocating, namely, the Gentile Christian church of his own day, and he wishes to describe how this church came to spread itself over the whole Empire, irresistibly. In his representation of the history, he has no animus against Jewish Christianity, far less against Peter or James. What he is absorbed in is the breach with Judaism, for in Judaism he sees the real opponent of Christianity. I cannot understand "Acts" except as a defence of the Christian religion before the Gentiles against the denunciation of the Jews, which is meant to show how Christianity, with its mission to the world, has proved to be the annulling of Judaism. That the author of this apologetic treatise, written about the close of the first century, chooses to put his leading ideas in narrative rather than in argumentative form, is due to the nature of the case. He was in no sense dealing with a subject that was generally known, but with a religion just in the bud. Besides, he seems to have held the opinion that the best way to know things is to know their origin and develop. ment. The result is, that the general view of Christianity adopted by this author brings him and his composition really nearer to the apologists than to the writings of Paul.-J. Weiss.