The Acts of the Apostles

WRITTEN OR ORAL SOURCES 235
17), and in not a few other cases.^ On the whole
this section, which is in no way necessarily dependent
on a written source, bears the stamp of historical trust-
worthiness just because it does not eulogise St. Paul
—indeed, leaves him open to possible accusations of
want of courage. If, however, it is believed that
here and there in the second half of the book we
cannot dispense with the hypothesis of written sources,
it need not at all follow that the authorship of St.
Luke is excluded.
When attempting to answer the question whether
a temporary companion of St. Paul could have written
the second half of the book, we ought to keep all
trivial details out of sight. The few historical mis-
takes in matters of detail, with which it is possible to
charge the author, are not at aU to the point; for
St. Luke has the right to make a mistake, especially
when he was not an eye-witness and was dependent upon
the reports of others. This, however, does not pre-
vent people from confidently asserting that xxi. 20 ^.,
and the manner in which St. Paul is represented as
defending himself before the Jewish (and Gentile)
tribunal in the last chapters of the book, either exclude
a companion of St. Paul as author, or destroy all hope
that we shall ever arrive at an intelligible conception of
the actual course of events.^ Here one representation
* It has been already recognised by Storr that this straining after
brevity, leading here and there to ambiguity, is to be noticed in
the gospel as well as in the Acts.
2 Vide e.g. Julicher, Neue Linien, s. 60 : "If one of the most inti-
mate companions of St. Paul tells us without the slightest hesitation
how St. Paul for the sake of peace wished by an elaborate act of
hypocrisy to convince the Jews that he still walked in the strict