The Acts of the Apostles

xvi INTRODUCTION
loftiest heights imaginable, and with it his own work
to the same high level. His daring is equally great
regarded either from an objective or a subjective
point of view. To the sacred history of Jesus was
now added a second part of this history, and side by
side with the Gospel narrative style, which already
possessed a fixed type, there was now established the
type of this new history ! Here the selection of
material was entirely the work of St. Luke, equally
so the type of narrative. For the latter the Gospel
type could scarcely in any point serve as a model
it was necessarily an entirely fresh creation, and
though many have imitated it, their scope has been
always more limited,^ nor have their attempts been
either happy or successful.
Thus the new religion, even in its very beginnings,
entered into the possession of a written history, and
this written not by a Jewish Christian or a native
of Palestine, but by a Greek. This was a fact of
immeasurable significance ! It was the Hellene, scarcely
yet won to the new religion, who presented Christianity
mth a history, and so compelled her adherents to
follow him in his selection out of the chaotic mass of
and the character of his narrative—he always has the Christian
community in view, and his style is liturgical—his anonymity and
his solemn conclusion show that he wished to create a book for
liturgical use. St. Luke has written under his own name and for
private use. Acts i. 1 shows that something has fallen out before
St. Luke i. 1—namely, the address. It seems that the beginning
of St. Mark has also suffered from correction. This gospel also
was not originally a liturgical book.
1 I mean the series of so-called apocryphal Acts, which begins
with the Acta Pauli; though perhaps we should say with the
Kerygma Petri.
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