Supernatural Religion Volume III Part 4

sections from a diary kept by some companion of the Apostle Paul during the journeys and voyages to which they relate, but opinion is very divided as to the person

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to whom that diary must be ascribed. It is of course recognized that the various theories regarding his ident.i.ty are merely based upon conjecture, but they have long severely exercised critical ingenuity.

A considerable party adopt the conclusion that the diary was probably written by Luke.(1) This theory has certainly the advantage of whatever support may be derived from tradition; and it has been conjectured, not without probability, that this diary, being either written by, or originally attributed to, Luke, may possibly have been the source from which, in course of time, the whole of the Acts, and consequently the Gospel, came to be ascribed to Luke.(2) The selection of a comparatively less known name than that of Timothy, t.i.tus or Silas,(3) for instance, may thus be explained; but, besides, it has the great advantage that, the name of Luke never being mentioned in the Acts, he is not exposed to criticism, which has found serious objections to the claims of other better known followers of Paul.

There are, however, many critics who find difficulties in the way of accepting Luke as the author of the "we" sections, and who adopt the theory that they were pro-

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probably composed by Timothy.(1) It is argued that, if Luke had been the writer of this diary, he must have been in very close relations to Paul, having been his companion during the Apostle's second mission journey, as well as during the later European journey, and finally during the eventful journey of Paul as a prisoner from Caesarea to Rome. Under these circ.u.mstances, it is natural to expect that Paul should mention him in his earlier epistles, written before the Roman imprisonment, but this he nowhere does. For instance, no mention whatever is made of Luke in either of the letters to the Corinthians nor in those to the Thessalonians; but on the other hand, Timothy's name, together with that of Silva.n.u.s (or Silas), is joined to Paul's in the two letters to the Thessalonians, besides being mentioned in the body of the first Epistle (iii. 2, 6); and he is repeatedly and affectionately spoken of in the earlier letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. iv. 17, xvi. 10), and his name is likewise combined with the Apostle's in the second Epistle (2 Cor. i.

1), as well as mentioned in the body of the letter, along with that of Silva.n.u.s, as a fellow-preacher with Paul. In the Epistle to the Philippians, later, the name of Luke does not appear, although, had he been the companion of the Apostle from Troas, he must have been known to the Philippians, but on the other hand, Timothy is again a.s.sociated in the opening greeting of that Epistle. Timothy is known to have

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been a fellow-worker with the Apostle, and to have accompanied him in his missionary journeys, and he is repeatedly mentioned in the Acts as the companion of Paul, and the first occasion is precisely where the [------] sections commence.(1) In connection with Acts xv. 40, xvi.

3,10, it is considered that Luke is quite excluded from the possibility of being the companion who wrote the diary we are discussing, by the Apostle's own words in 2 Cor. i. 19:(2) "For the Son of G.o.d, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silva.n.u.s and Timothy," &c, &c. The eye-witness who wrote the journal from which the [------] sections are taken must have been with the Apostle in Corinth, and, it is of course always a.s.serted, must have been one of his [------], and preached the Gospel.(3) Is it possible, on the supposition that this fellow-labourer was Luke, that the Apostle could in so marked a manner have excluded his name by clearly defining that "us" only meant himself and Silva.n.u.s and Timothy? Mayerhoff(4) has gone even further than the critics we have referred to, and maintains Timothy to be the author of the third Synoptic and of Acts.

We may briefly add that some writers have conjectured Silas to be the author of the [------] sections,(5) and others

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have referred them to t.i.tus.(1) It is evident that whether the [------]

sections be by the unknown author of the rest of the Acts, or be part of a diary by some unknown companion of Paul, introduced into the work by the general editor, they do not solve the problem as to the ident.i.ty of the author, who remains absolutely unknown. We have said enough to enable the reader to understand the nature of the problem regarding the author of the third Synoptic and of the Acts of the Apostles, and whilst for our purpose much less would have sufficed, it is evident that the materials do not exist for identifying him. The stupendous miracles related in these two works, therefore, rest upon the evidence of an unknown writer, who from internal evidence must have composed them very long after the events recorded. Externally, there is no proof even of the existence of the Acts until towards the end of the second century, when also for the first time we hear of a vague theory as to the name and ident.i.ty of the supposed author, a theory which declares Luke not to have himself been an eye-witness of the occurrences related in the Gospel, and which reduces his partic.i.p.ation even in the events narrated in the Acts to a very small and modest compa.s.s, leaving the great ma.s.s of the miracles described in the work without even his personal attestation. The theory, however, we have seen to be not only unsupported by evidence, but to be contradicted by many potent circ.u.mstances. We propose now, without exhaustively examining the contents of the Acts, which would itself require a separate treatise, at least to

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consider some of its main points sufficiently to form a fair judgment of the historical value of the work, although the facts which we have already ascertained are clearly fatal to the doc.u.ment as adequate testimony for miracles, and the reality of Divine Revelation.

CHAPTER III. DESIGN AND COMPOSITION

The historical value of the Acts of the Apostles has very long been the subject of vehement discussion, and the course of the controversy has certainly not been favourable to the position of the work. For a considerable time the traditional view continued to prevail, and little or no doubt of the absolute credibility of the narrative was ever expressed. When the spirit of independent and enlightened criticism was finally aroused, it had to contend with opinions which habit had rendered stereotype, and prejudices which took the form of hereditary belief. A large body of eminent critics, after an exhaustive investigation of the Acts, have now declared that the work is not historically accurate, and cannot be accepted as a true account of the Acts and teaching of the Apostles.(1)

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The Author of the Acts has been charged with having written the work with a distinct design to which he subordinated historical truth, and in this view many critics have joined, who ultimately do not accuse him absolutely of falsifying history, but merely of making a deliberate selection of his materials with the view of placing events in the light most suitable for his purpose. Most of those, however, who make this charge maintain that, in carrying out the original purpose of the Acts, the writer so freely manipulated whatever materials he had before him, and so dealt with facts whether by omission, transformation or invention, that the historical value of his narrative has been destroyed or at least seriously affected by it.1 On the other hand, many apologetic writers altogether deny the existence of any design on the part of the

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author such as is here indicated, which could have led him to suppress or distort facts,(1) and whilst some of them advance very varied and fanciful theories as to the historical plan upon which the writer proceeds, and in accordance with which the peculiarities of his narrative are explained, they generally accept the work as the genuine history of the Acts of the Apostles so far as the author possessed certain information. The design most generally ascribed to the writer of the Acts may, with many minor variations, be said to be apologetic and conciliatory: an attempt to reconcile the two parties in the early church by representing the difference between the views of Peter and Paul as slight and unimportant, Pauline sentiments being freely placed in the mouth of Peter, and the Apostle of the Gentiles being represented as an orthodox adherent of the church of Jerusalem, with scarcely such advanced views of christian universality as Peter; or else, an effort of Gentile Christianity to bring itself into closer union with the primitive church, surrendering, in so doing, all its distinctive features and its Pauline origin, and representing the universalism by which it exists, as a principle adopted and promulgated from the very first by Peter and the Twelve. It is not necessary, however, for us to enter upon any minute discussion of this point, nor is it requisite, for the purposes of our inquiry, to determine whether the peculiar character

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of the writing which we are examining is the result of a perfectly definite purpose controlling the whole narrative and modifying every detail, or naturally arises from the fact that it is the work of a pious member of the Church writing long after the events related, and imbuing his materials, whether of legend or ecclesiastical tradition, with his own thoroughly orthodox views: history freely composed for Christian edification. We shall not endeavour to construct any theory to account for the phenomena before us, nor to discover the secret motives or intentions of the writer, but taking them as they are, we shall simply examine some of the more important portions of the narrative, with a view to determine whether the work can in any serious sense be regarded as credible history.

No one can examine the contents of the Acts without perceiving that some secret motive or influence did certainly govern the writer's mind, and guide him in the selection of topics, and this is betrayed by many peculiarities in his narrative. Quite apart from any attempt to discover precisely what that motive was, it is desirable that we should briefly point out some of these peculiarities. It is evident that every man who writes a history must commence with a distinct plan, and that the choice of subjects to be introduced or omitted must proceed upon a certain principle. This is of course an invariable rule wherever there is order and arrangement. No one has ever questioned that in the Acts of the Apostles both order and arrangement have been deliberately adopted and the question naturally arises: What was the plan ol the Author? and upon what principle did he select, from the ma.s.s of facts which might have been related regarding the Church in the Apostolic ages, precisely those

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which he has inserted, to the exclusion of the rest?(1) What t.i.tle will adequately represent the contents of the book? for it is admitted by almost all critics that the actual name which the book bears neither was given to it by its author nor properly describes its intention and subject.(2) The extreme difficulty which has been felt in answering these questions, and in constructing any hypothesis which may fairly correspond with the actual contents of the Acts, const.i.tutes one of the most striking commentaries on the work, and although we cannot here detail the extremely varied views of critics upon the subject, they are well worthy of study.(3) No one now advances the theory which was anciently current that the Author simply narrated that of which he was an eye-witness.(4) Its present t.i.tle [------] would lead us to expect an account of the doings of the Apostles in general, but we have nothing like this in the book. Peter and Paul occupy the princ.i.p.al parts of the narrative, and the other Apostles are scarcely mentioned.

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James is introduced as an actor in the famous Council, and represented as head of the Church in Jerusalem, but it is much disputed that he was either an Apostle, or one of the Twelve. The death of James the brother of John is just mentioned. John is represented on several occasions during the earlier part of the narrative as the companion of Peter, without, however, being prominently brought forward; and the rest of the Twelve are left in complete obscurity. It is not a history of the labours of Peter and Paul, for not only is considerable importance given to the episodes of Stephen and Philip the Evangelist, but the account of the two great Apostles is singularly fragmentary. After a brief chronicle of the labours of Peter, he suddenly disappears from the scene, and we hear of him no more. Paul then becomes the prominent figure in the drama; but we have already pointed out how defective is the information given regarding him, and he is also abandoned as soon as he is brought to Rome: of his subsequent career and martyrdom, nothing whatever is said. The work is not, as Luther suggested, a gloss on the Epistles of Paul and the inculcation of his doctrine of righteousness through faith, for the narrative of the Acts, so far as we can compare it with the Epistles, which are nowhere named in it, is generally in contradiction to them, and the doctrine of justification by faith is conspicuous by its absence. It is not a history of the first Christian missions, for it ignores entirely the labours of most of the Apostles, omits all mention of some of the most interesting missionary journeys, and does not even give a report of the introduction of Christianity into Rome. It is not in any sense a Paulinian history of the Church, for if, on the one side, it describes the Apostles of the Circ.u.mcision as

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promulgating the universalism which Paul preached, it robs him of his originality, dwarfs his influence upon the development of Christianity, and is, on the other hand, too defective to represent Church history, whether from a Paulinian or any other standpoint. The favourite theory: that the writer designed to relate the story of the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome, can scarcely be maintained, although it certainly has the advantage of a vagueness of proportions equally suitable to the largest and most limited treatment of history.

But, in such a case, we have a drama with the main incident omitted; for the introduction of the Gospel into Rome is not described at all, and whilst the author could not consider the personal arrival at Rome of the Apostle Paul the climax of his history, he at once closes his account where the final episode ought to have commenced.

From all points of view, and upon any hypothesis, the Acts of the Apostles is so obviously incomplete as a history, so fragmentary and defective as biography, that critics have to the present day failed in framing any theory which could satisfactorily account for its anomalies, and have almost been forced to explain them by supposing a partial, apologetic or conciliatory, design, which removes the work from the region of veritable history. The whole interest of the narrative, of course, centres in the two representative Apostles, Peter and Paul, who alternately fill the scene. It is difficult to say, however, whether the account of the Apostle of the Circ.u.mcision or of Paul is the more capriciously partial and incomplete. After his miraculous liberation from the prison into which he had been cast by Herod, the doings of Peter are left unchronicled, and although he is reintroduced for a moment to plead the cause of the

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Gentiles at the Council in Jerusalem, he then finally retires from the scene, to give place to Paul. The omissions from the history of Paul are very remarkable, and all the more so from the extreme and unnecessary detail of the itinerary of some of his journeys, and neither the blanks, on the one hand, nor the excessive minuteness, on the other, are to be explained by any theory connected with personal knowledge on the part of Theophilus. Of the general history of the primitive Church and the life and labours of the Twelve, we are told little or nothing. According to the Author the propagation of the Gospel was carried on more by angelic agency than apostolic enthusiasm. There is a liberal infusion of miraculous episodes in the history, but a surprising scarcity of facts.

Even where the Author is best informed, as in the second part of the Acts, the narrative of Paul's labours and missionary journeys, while presenting striking omissions, is really minute and detailed only in regard to points of no practical interest, leaving both the distinctive teaching of the Apostle, and the internal economy of the Church almost entirely unrepresented. Does this defective narrative of the Acts of the Apostles proceed from poverty of information, or from the arbitrary selection of materials for a special purpose? As we proceed, it will become increasingly evident that, limited although the writer's materials are, the form into which they have been moulded has undoubtedly been determined either by a dominant theory, or a deliberate design, neither of which is consistent with the composition of sober history.

This is particularly apparent in the representation which is given of the two princ.i.p.al personages of the narrative. Critics have long clearly recognised that the

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Author of the Acts has carefully arranged his materials so as to present as close a parallelism as possible between the Apostles Peter and Paul.(1) We shall presently see how closely he a.s.similates their teaching, ascribing the views of Paul to Peter, and putting Petrine sentiments in the mouth of Paul, but here we shall merely refer to points of general history. If Peter has a certain pre-eminence as a distinguished member of the original Apostolic body, the equal claim of Paul to the honours of the Apostolate, whilst never directly advanced, is prominently suggested by the narration, no less than three times, of the circ.u.mstances of his conversion and direct call to the office by the glorified Jesus. The first miracle ascribed to Peter is the healing of "a certain man lame from his mother's womb" [------] at the beautiful gate of the Temple,(2) and the first wonder performed by Paul is also the healing of "a certain man lame from his mother's womb" [------] at Lystra;(3)

Ananias and Sapphira are punished through the instrumentality of Peter,(4) and Elymas is smitten with blindness at the word of Paul;(5) the sick are laid in the streets that the shadow of Peter may fall upon them, and they are healed, as are also those

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vexed with unclean spirits;(l) handkerchiefs or ap.r.o.ns are taken to the sick from the body of Paul, and they are healed, and the evil spirits go out of them;(2) Peter withstands Simon the sorcerer,(3) as Paul does the sorcerer Elymas and the exorcists at Ephesus;(4) if Peter heals the paralytic aeneas at Lydda,(5) Paul restores to health the fever-stricken father of Publius at Melita;(6) Peter raises from the dead Tabitha, a disciple at Joppa,(7) and Paul restores to life the disciple Eutychus at Troas;(8) Cornelius falls at the feet of Peter, and wors.h.i.+ps him, Peter preventing him, and saying: "Rise up! I myself also am a man,"(9) and in like manner the people of Lystra would have done sacrifice to Paul, and he prevents them, crying out: "We also are men of like pa.s.sions with you;"(10) Peter lays his hands on the people of Samaria, and they receive, the Holy Ghost and the gift of tongues,(11) and Paul does the same for believers at Ephesus;(12) Peter is brought before the council,(13) and so is Paul;(14) the one is imprisoned and twice released by an angel,(15) and the other is delivered from his bonds by a great earthquake;(16) if Peter be scourged by order of the council,(17) Paul is beaten with many stripes at the command of the magistrates of Philippi.(18) It is maintained that the desire to equalise the sufferings of the two Apostles in the cause of the Gospel, as he has equalised their miraculous displays, probably led the Author to omit all mention of those

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perils and persecutions to which the Apostle Paul refers in support of his protest, that he had laboured and suffered more than all the rest.(1) If Paul was called by a vision to the ministry of the Gentiles,(2) so Peter is represented as having been equally directed by a vision to baptize the Gentile Cornelius;(3) the double vision of Peter and Cornelius has its parallel in the double vision of Paul and Ananias.

It is impossible to deny the measured equality thus preserved between the two Apostles, or to ignore the fact that parallelism like this is the result of premeditation, and cannot claim the character of impartial history.

The speeches form an important element in the Acts of the Apostles, and we shall now briefly examine them, reserving, however, for future consideration their dogmatic aspect. Few, if any writers, however apologetic, maintain that these discourses can possibly have been spoken exactly as they are recorded in the Acts. The utmost that is a.s.serted is that they are substantially historical, and fairly represent the original speeches.(4) They were derived, it is alleged, either from written sources, or oral

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tradition, and many, especially in the second part, are supposed to have been delivered in the presence of the Author of the work. This view is held, of course, with a greater or less degree of a.s.surance as to the closeness of the relation which our record bears to the original addresses; but, without here very closely scrutinizing hesitation or reticence, our statement fairly renders the apologetic position. A large body of able critics, however, deny the historical character of these speeches,(1) and consider them mere free compositions by the Author of the Acts, at the best being on a par with the speeches which many ancient writers place in the mouths of their historical personages, and giving only what the writer supposed that the speaker would say under the circ.u.mstances. That the writer may have made use of such materials as were within his reach, or endeavoured to embody the ideas which tradition may broadly have preserved, may possibly be admitted, but that these discourses can seriously be accepted as conveying a correct report of anything actually spoken by the persons in whose mouths they are put is, of course, denied. It is,

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obviously, extremely improbable that any of these speeches could have been written down at the time.(1) Taking even the supposed case that the Author of the Acts was Luke, and was present when some of the speeches of Paul were delivered, it is difficult to imagine that he immediately recorded his recollection of them, and more than this he could not have done. He must continually have been in the habit of hearing the preaching of Paul, and therefore could not have had the inducement of novelty to make him write down what he heard. The idea of recording them for posterity could not have occurred to such a person, with the belief in the approaching end of all things then prevalent. The Author of the Acts was not the companion of Paul, however, and the contents of the speeches, as we shall presently see, are not of a character to make it in the least degree likely that they could have been written down for separate circulation. Many of the speeches in the Acts, moreover, were delivered under circ.u.mstances which render it specially unlikely that they could have

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