The Acts of the Apostles

CHAPTER IV
MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL WORKS OF THE SPIRIT
Accounts of miracles and works of the Spirit play
so great a part in the Acts of the Apostles that
the mind of the author can be discerned from these
narratives with special clearness. He himself is a
physician endowed with peculiar « Spiritual " gifts of
healing, and this fact profoundly affects his concep-
tion of Christianity. Moreover, these records are
also of importance for the discovery of the sources
of the book ; they confirm its unity, but they also
clearly show that distinct groups of subject-matter
exist therein. I first proceed to give a summary of the
material in question (see the tables on pp. 134 et seq.),
IVIerely a cursory glance at these tables discovers
a sufficiently striking state of things. Let us, how-
ever, commence oui* closer investigation with a general
survey :
—
The we-sections, although they comprise only about
one hundred verses (a tenth part of the book), con-
tain one summary account of cases of healing, besides
four accounts of single instances of the same sort
(including one case of raising from the dead), two
instances of interference by the Holy Spirit to pre-
vent a course of action, the appeai-ance of a man of
Macedonia in a vision, the appearance of the angel
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