=

menon. Numberless traces point to the hold which the new religion 1 was taking of the Empire at the time when this book was written, as well as to the evident sympathy with which the author viewed that extension. Apart from minor expressions like 18 (ews éσxátov tŷs yŷs=1347, from Isa 496 LXX) 915 1028. 29 1036 1344. 45 1427 2215. 21 2311 2617. 18, the whole 2 narrative of chapter 2 is dominated by the conception of the church as initially catholic (26 f.), inaugurated for universal ends and destined from the start to expand beyond purely national bounds. The enumeration of the audience, sweeping from East to West (29-11), the conscious scheme "from Jerusalem through Syrian Antioch to Rome" which underlies the whole book, the introduction of narratives like 85-18 10, 1119 f. 15, 185f, the cosmopolitan outlook on the religious history of the world (1415-17 1728 £. Ro 325), and the dramatic finalê (2825 f.) 3 with the characteristic words put into the mouth of Paul, rois eveσiv ἀπεστάλη τοῦτο τὸ σωτήριον τοῦ θεοῦ· αὐτοὶ καὶ ἀκούσονται,—these and other lines of evidence betray a fine religious pragmatism, by which the mission to the Gentiles was conceived as a natural, legitimate, and providential development. The author in fact read back the developed hopes and feelings of his own age into these sketches of nascent Christianity, because he heartily believed that catholicity of spirit was an essential part of the faith produced by the historical Jesus. These two ideas, (a) the catholicity and freedom, and (b) the spread of the Christian faith, are correlative. Inherent in the original teaching of Jesus, and substantially reproduced in the apostolic mind, they came to be understood and expressed with special emphasis in this literature of the last quarter of the century. Compare the close of the third gospel (2452. 53) and the close of Acts (2881), with their similar note of unrestrained vigour, also the patent universalism of the gospel with its characteristic touches like 1910 (ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός), 736-50, and 1711-19, etc. The note of the age (75-100), so far as Christianity's relation to Judaism is concerned, may be fairly summed up in the antithesis: Judaism as a religion is identical with and consummated in Christianity, Judaism as a nationality has become completely antagonistic to Christianity (Holtzmann).

The relative date of this book is easily determined. If, as is almost unanimously held (cp. the arguments marshalled in Overbeck-Zeller, ii. p. 213f., and Friedrich, Das Lukasevangelium und die Apgeschichte werke desselben Verfassers, 1890), it is by the author of the third gospel, then the composition of Acts (devτepos λóyos) falls into a more or less subsequent period. The time elapsing between the two has been variously reckoned (about nine or ten years, Renan), but is generally held to have been appreciable, chiefly owing to the difference of tradition in Lk 23, 24

1 True to his historical function, the writer did not represent the early organisation, however, as a mature and official system. It is impossible to make sense of DB, i. 32 (last two sentences), and the remark upon the next page-"No object could be gained by the representation which is given of its form and character"-betrays a deficient grasp of historical criticism. Consult Seufert, Ursp. u. Bedeut. d. Apostolates, pp. 77-95. 2 As even Blass admits in ver. (as on 839) quae sequuntur etiam magis quam priora προφητικώς narrata sunt, non ἱστορικῶς. On the moral apologues and suspiciously unhistorical elements in Ac 1-5, cp. Holtzmann, HC, i. pp. 310-340, and Ramsay, SPT, pp. 367-372; generally, Clemen, Chron. pp. 17-28, with the authorities there cited, and McGiffert's sensible and masterly treatment.

3 After ἀκωλύτως D adds the needless but congenial words, λέγων ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, δὲ οὗ μέλλει πᾶς (ὅλος ὁ κόσμος κρίνεσθαι. "Victoria verbi Dei, Paulus Romae, apex evangelii" (Bengel).

4 Acts 1 represents a fuller and later development of the resurrection- and ascension-stories, which apparently did not come into the writer's hands until the

and Ac 1. However, we do not possess any evidence which enables a calculation like this to be made with much accuracy. At any rate, 80-85 A.D. is the terminus a quo. After that period Acts was finally composed. The main considerations which indicate its period are twofold. (a) One is the incipient "catholicism "1 of the ideas and institutions in the writing, as in Clem. Rom. Acts stands little nearer to the events which it records, than the third gospel to the life of Jesus. The writer, a Gentile Christian, is at some distance from them, viewing retrospectively the earlier conflicts which have subsided into the more settled state of agreement and consolidation by which he is surrounded. This would naturally point to the closing decades of the century. A growth lies behind the author, and with the help of written sources he sets himself to trace that growth for the purpose of edifying his contemporaries and throwing light upon the status quo. (b) The other feature is, as already noted, the tone and feeling of the church toward the State, which has been rightly held to be incompatible with a date much posterior to the Flavian régime. On the ground of this evident endeavour 2 to exhibit Christianity in association with the Empire, and to indicate it as an innocent religious movement, Ramsay argues with great force that the third gospel was composed before (and finished in) 79-81, immediately after which the Acts was written. This is, however, to be too precise, and there is no ground for his further suggestion that the book was left incomplete owing to Luke's martyrdom under Domitian (SPT, pp. 23, 386 f.; so, for different reasons, Spitta). After Hilgenfeld (95–100 A.D.), Mangold (-Bleek) selected the beginning of the last decade of the century, Reuss (pp. 296-310) its last quarter; Keim chose a slightly earlier period, 80-90 A.D. (i. 63), but Wendt (-Meyer) has recently gone back to 95-100. Bleek and Renan,3 followed by Dr. Sanday, come down even as far as c. 80 (so Adeney, BI, p. 345, and Bartlet, AA, pp. 511), Headlam (DB, i. pp. 29, 30) and Zahn (Einl. ii. pp. 424-439) to c. 75, or to " a period shortly after 70."

It is impossible to believe the preposterous idea (Euseb. HE, II. 22) that the book was written contemporaneously with or just after (vide Blass, Proleg. § 2) the events recorded at its close. Those only who find the author's silence upon Paul's death unaccountable if he wrote

gospel was published. Otherwise the inconsistencies are quite incredible. Sir John Hawkins (Horae Synopt. pp. 140-161) infers that a considerable interval elapsed between the two books, on account of the differences in vocabulary and phraseology,

1"Nicht Paulus wird judaisirt, nicht Petrus paulinisirt, sondern Paulus und Petrus lucanisirt d. h. katholisirt " (Jülicher): "Der Verfasser hat nicht tendenziös den Petrus paulinisiert und den Paulus petrinisiert; er hat vielmehr beiden Aposteln seine eigene christlichen Gedanken, die Auschauungen des Heidenchristenthums der nach-apostolischen Zeit geliehen" (Wendt).

2 So Schäfer: "Die Apgeschichte ist keine Geschichte d. app. sondern eine Apologie des Kirche" (1890).

3 So Les Apôtres, pp. xi. f., but cp. Les Évangiles, chap. xix., for a later date, c. 100. 4 So L. Schultze (Handbuch der theolog. Wissenschaften, Band i. Abth. 2, p. 74 f.), Rendall (Acts, 1897), Barde (Comm. sur les Actes, pp. 508-583), and R. B. Rackham (JTS, Oct. 1899, pp. 76-87). That Acts could have been written at the close of the two years' imprisonment of the apostle (Ac 2830) is a precritical theory which rests on sentimental or subjective grounds, and is only tenable when the phenomena both of Acts and of the third gospel are ignored (as by Schäfer, Einl. p. 290f.), or minimised. At this time of day one must be excused from discussing the merits of a hypothesis which involves the composition of the third gospel some nine or ten years before (!) the crisis of A.D. 70. Knowling seems to incline to Blass's position (ExGT, ii. 34–36), in a learned and candid edition which reflects the conservative standpoint.

after that event, are obliged to take up a position which does violence to all considerations of its standpoint and literary relations. Hardly more ground exists for a deep second-century date. The older Tübingen school en masse, absorbed in the idea of pragmatic tendencies, put the Acts under Trajan or Hadrian (so Zeller-Overbeck, ii. pp. 267-284, and Hausrath). Pfleiderer, like S. Davidson (INT. ii. pp. 76-176), still is unable to find its period of composition earlier than 110-120 A.D. (Urc. pp. 613–614), and he is followed as usual by Martineau (Seat of Authority, p. 257). But this is scarcely justified, though Rovers (Nieuw-test Letterkunde, 1888, pp. 205, 206) and Schmiedel still (EBi, i. pp. 49, 50) hold to 105 (110)-130 A.D. Jülicher, while he rejects the Lucan authorship (Einl. p. 262 f.) of this "ideal church history," will not go further down than 100-105 A.D. Similarly, in the main, Holtzmann (HC, i. p. 5) and Weizsäcker; while, like Gfrörer, Schleiermacher, and Keim, McGiffert (AA, pp. 348 f., 437 f.) places the book in Domitian's reign, as do Löning (Gemeinde-Verfassung, p. 62) and J. Réville (Les origines de l'épiscopat, I. pp. 43, 44: dating it previous to the pastoral epistles). The epistle of Clem. Rom. is sometimes taken as a terminus ad quem; but while the resemblances are striking (cp. the similar use of Ps 8921 LXX in Ac 1322 and CR 181, Ac 2035 CR 21, Ac 125 = CR 54.7), they do not decisively prove dependence either way. So far as later literary connections are concerned, the question of the date of Acts is left practically open.

From the standpoint of modern realism it would no doubt be more satisfactory to have had Acts rounded off with an account of Paul's martyr death. But to expect such a finalê is to mistake the whole current of the book. The author's silence upon Paul's death almost certainly means that the apostle was condemned by the Roman authorities, or that the Christian church had—by the end of the first century-lost all definite knowledge of how and when he died; a conclusion which is corroborated by the vague allusions in Clem. Rom. Yet even had he known the details of the apostle's death, there is no reason why this writer should have added them. The taste for details of Christian martyrdom was a later growth. Besides, Acts is not a biography of Paul, but a sketch of the early church in its development through the jars and problems and energies of the early apostles to its culminating hold upon Rome. And as the author does not give even a full sketch of Paul's previous career, it is not uncharacteristic of him to stop short of that tragic event which followed the two years' residence in Rome. As writer and readers probably were aware of the general fact of Paul's death, the former had as little interest in telling it as in suppressing it, particularly as it contradicted the general purport of his volume. Possibly, too, Nero's treatment of Paul was silently omitted as a deplorable exception to the normal policy of the State. As for the apostle's career at the close, it is clear that in the belief of the author of Acts (2025), Paul never revisited Asia Minor-a proposition which is irreconcilable with the tradition underlying the "pastoral" letters. Zahn's attempt to prove that ouκéri is not equivalent to où máλy, and that the parting was for long, but not necessarily for ever, is a bit of special pleading (Einl. i. pp. 444, 445) which evades the plain force of this passage, just as the conventional ecclesiastical exegesis shrinks from Mt 125. The usage of ouκért in Jo 1610. 19 is no parallel, as there the context carefully explains the meaning. Ac 2025 is more than a presentiment of the speaker. It is obviously a tragic fact, solemnly ratified by the historian (2038).

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 1 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 adhering to this position 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.

2 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'École 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