The Acts of the Apostles

198 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
detail is unhistorical it only follows that the Antio-
chean source has erred for once ; and yet even in
this case it is left open to us to suppose that the
whole account of this journey does not belong to the
Antiochean source, but has been inserted by St. Luke
on mistaken information. It can be omitted without
difficulty.
The account of the so-called first missionary journey
belonging to this source is not so vivid in its style nor
so trustworthy (vide supra, pp. 92^.) as the greater
part of the narrative in the second half of the Acts.
Here also St. Luke has evidently taken certain liber-
ties. I conjecture that the source only gave the route
(without dates, which are almost entirely absent), and
that St. Luke taliter qualiter fashioned this into a
"history" in which the great interpolated discourse
at Antioch takes up more than a third part of the
space. He here gradually allows St. Barnabas to fall
into the background behind St. Paul—in opposition
to the attitude of the source (vide supra). If this
source originated in Antioch one understands why
that metropolis), and had been stirred up by unauthorised meddlers
from Jerusalem, not a general spontaneous effort to regulate the
whole relations between Jewish and Gentile Christians. It stands
to reason that the decision arrived at was afterwards of importance
for Gentile Christians in general (xxi. 25). Instead of pulling
St. Luke to pieces, one ought rather to recognise that here he
does not move in generalities, but has given a fairly detailed re-
presentation. To bring the collection for the famine -stricken
Christians of Jerusalem (xi. 29 /. ; xii. 24) into connection with the
compact made in Gal. ii. 10 belongs to that class of combinations
which compromises historical criticism. The attractiveness of the
hypothesis lies in the fact that St. Peter is still in Jerusalem, while
according to chap. xii. he seems to have definitely left that city.