The Acts of the Apostles

THE TREATMENT OF PERSONS 123
ance at all for the plan of his work, or because their
importance seemed to him to be exhausted with the
mere mention of their names, or because he had no
further information about them. Among these we
include the Apostles in so far as in i. 18 a list of their
names is given ; further, in the first part of the Acts,
the Apostle John, the Apostle James—described in xii.
as the brother of John, this can only be because it is
presupposed that the latter was known to the readers
—Joseph, Barsabbas, and Matthias (i. 23, 26), the
Mother of our Lord (i. 14) and His brethren {he. cit.) ;
lastly, the Seven (vi. 5).
Again in the second part of
the book we also have as subordinate characters St.
Mark (xiii. 5, 13; xv. 37 f.)—already mentioned
in the first part (xii. 12,^ 25), and thus forming a
bond between the two parts—the prophets and
teachers of Antioch (xiii. 1/.), Silas (xv. 22, 27, 32,
40, and in chaps, xvi.—xix.), Judas Barsabbas (xv. 22,
27, 32), Timotheus (chaps, xvi.-xix.), Aquila and
Priscilla (xviii. 1 ff.), Erastus (xix. 22), Gaius and
Aristarchus (xix. 29 ; xx. 4 ; Aristarchus also in
xxvii. 2), and the companions of St. Paul mentioned
in XX. 4. Of these persons, who are only cursorily
sketched or not sketched at all, St. Mark is the only
one of whom we learn anything discreditable. We
cannot see why St. Luke should have mentioned him
at all if he only meant to tell his readers that when St.
Mark had been chosen to accompany the two Apostles
as their minister he had left them of his own accord,
and that this behaviour of his was the cause of a
^ In this passage he is, as it were, announced beforehand, just as
it is with St. James in xii. 17.