INTRODUCTION THE opening words of the Acts ("the former treatise have I made, O Theophilus," etc.) state that the writer is identical with the writer of the third Gospel, and it is universally admitted that the two works are by the same hand. The vocabulary of the two works possesses remarkable peculiarities, of which the following are examples: 1 The word 2 rendered "return" in i. 12; viii. 25, 28, occurs twenty-two times in the Acts, eleven times in the Gospel, and only twice certainly in the rest of N.T. The peculiar compound verb 3 rendered " 'send," "send away" (e.g. in the Magnificat "sent empty away"), "send forth," occurs three times in the Gospel, seven times in the Acts (vii. 12; ix. 30; xi. 22, etc.), and elsewhere in N.T. only Gal. iv. 4, 6. The graphic adverb rendered "presently," Matt. xxi. 19; "straightway," Acts v. 10, but usually "immediately" (e.g. iii. 7; ix. 18) occurs ten times in the Gospel, seven times in the Acts, and elsewhere in N.T. only Matt. xxi. 19, 20. The graphic verb 5 rendered "fasten the eyes on,' ""look earnestly," "look stedfastly," "stedfastly behold," occurs in Luke iv. 10; xxii. 56, ten times in the Acts (e.g. i. 10; iii. 4, 12), and elsewhere in N.T. 1 For a full list see Lekebusch, pp. 37-74. 2 ὑποστρέφω. 3 ἐξαποστέλλω. 5 ἀτενίζω. 4 παραχρῆμα. only 2 Cor. iii. 7, 13. (Both these words are charac teristic of the writer's vivid style.) The peculiar phrase "the breaking of bread" only occurs The medical phrase rendered, Luke iv. 38, "was taken with Similarly the verb "to heal" as an active verb occurs (with the exception of a quotation from the LXX.) only once elsewhere in N.T., but seven times in Luke, and three times in the Acts, while the derived word "healing" is only found Luke xiii. 32; Acts iv. 22, 30.2 The style is strikingly similar: 3 One instance may be referred to in English, viz. the use of the graphic rose up and... or "arise and 66 instead of a simple verb. This occurs twice in Matthew, eight times in Mark, but sixteen times in Luke, and nineteen times in the Acts (e.g. i. 15; ix. 17). Knowledge of a circumstance mentioned only in Luke is assumed in the Acts: Acts iv. 27, "against thy holy child Jesus both Herod and Pontius Pilate . . were gathered together," assumes a knowledge of the account of Pilate's reconciliation with Herod, which is related by Luke alone, xxiii. 6-12. The standpoint of the two works is the same, viz. the catholicity (or universal character) of the Gospel : Notice the words of Simeon, Luke ii. 30, "thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles." The genealogy in Luke iii. is carried back to Adam, and not as, Matt. i., to Abraham. The parable of the good Samaritan is told only in Luke xvi. 1 ἰάομαι. 2 láois, cf. especially the juxtaposition with 'Inσoûs, ix. 34; x. 38. 3 See Lekebusch, p. 76 seq. The author is referred to as Luke in what is known as "the Muratorian fragment" (about A.D. 170-175), and Irenaeus1 (Bishop of Lyons, wrote about 190 A.D.) definitely speaks of him as Luke who was "inseparable from Paul, and his fellow - worker in the Gospel"; his younger contemporaries, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, assert the same, and it was not before the ninth century that the authorship was questioned. The first undoubted reference to the Acts occurs A.D. 177, in a letter of the churches of Lugdunum (Lyons) and Vienna (Vienne) to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, in which they describe a recent persecution, and say that their martyrs "prayed, like Stephen, the perfect martyr, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge,'" cf. vii. 60. Clement, Bishop of Rome at the end of the first century, has the phrase "more gladly giving than receiving, but considering the many collections of "sayings of the Lord" which undoubtedly existed from the earliest times, this cannot possibly prove a knowledge of Acts xx. 35. The author, in his important preface to the Gospel (Luke i. 1-4), describes himself as "having traced the course of all things accurately from the first" (so R.V.), and as drawing up his relation in accordance with what was "delivered (i.e. probably orally) unto us" by those who were "from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word." He thus distinguishes himself from the "eye-witnesses," but appears to bring himself into personal relation with them. In the Acts, with the exception of referring back 1 Adv. Haeres., iii. 14, 1. to his "former treatise" (i. 1), he says nothing about himself, but in the 16th chapter a striking phenomenon occurs. In the description of Paul's second missionary journey the writer (xvi. 8) says "they came down to Troas," but immediately afterwards (xvi. 10) adds "we endeavoured to go into Macedonia." The pronoun we" is then used until it disappears, in ver. 17, just before the imprisonment of Paul and Silas at Philippi. It then reappears, xx. 5, at Philippi, and continues throughout the account of the journey to Jerusalem as far as xxi. 18, and its use begins again for the third time, xxvii. 1, with Paul's embarkation from Caesarea, and continues throughout his final journey to Rome. 1 It has been argued that these " we-passages are portions from the diary of an actual companion of Paul, which have been incorporated by the writer into his narrative, either (1) clumsily, or (2) fraudulently, and that consequently they do not prove that the writer of the Gospel and of the Acts was himself Paul's fellow-traveller. The former view is universally repudiated, for the Acts exhibit throughout an identity of language and style which makes the theory of such a mechanical incorporation of other writings impossible.2 The second view, that the "we-passages " are introduced in order to create a false impression that the writer was Paul's companion, is inconsistent (a) with the singularly quiet way in which the pronoun is introduced, and (b) with the intermittent manner of its appearance. Any one desirous of impressing on his readers his 1 e.g. Timothy, Bleek; Silas, Schwanbeck. 2 Meyer, Zeller, Lekebusch, Klostermann. own personality would (a) have put himself forward in a more striking manner, and (b) have been unlikely to invent an arbitrary disappearance such as that of "we" at Philippi, xvi. 17, or its equally arbitrary reappearance at the same place, xx. 5. The simplest explanation of these we-passages certainly is that they occur naturally, the writer being Luke, and he having actually accompanied the Apostle on those portions of his missionary journeys where the pronoun occurs.1 It should be added, also, that these passages are distinguished from the rest of the narrative by a fuller and more vivid character (e.g. xx. 8 ; xxviii. 2, "because of the present rain and because of the cold"; "whose sign was Castor and Pollux"), such as would be natural in an eye-witness. Of Luke himself we know nothing beyond the three beautiful references to him 2 in the Epistles of Paul to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to Timothy. The Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon were most probably written during Paul's first imprisonment in Rome, and indicate not merely Luke's presence, but also his personal care for the writer, and his active exertions in aiding "the work" in which he was engaged. The second Epistle to Timothy, from which the Epistle for St. Luke's day is taken, is referred in the so-called subscription" to the epistle found in A.V. to a second imprisonment of Paul at Rome, but, what 1 From xxi. 18 to xxvii. 1 the narrative is not of a kind in which " we could naturally occur, and we must not, from its absence, infer the absence of Luke. 2 Printed on the reverse of the title-page. |