The Acts of the Apostles

—
WRITTEN OR ORAL SOURCES 243
upon a written document. So, above all, for chaps,
iii., iv., and chap. xii. As for the former extensive
passage, it is here so obvious that the name of St.
John has been interpolated into a story that had
already taken a fixed form, that we need only ask
whether St. Luke himself inserted it or a later inter-
polator. Seeing, however, that St. Luke without
doubt betrays in his gospel an interest in St. Peter
and St. John {vide especially xx. 8 ; the other gospels
give no names here), it is precarious not to ascribe
this interest also to him in the Acts. Then it would
follow that the tradition of chaps, iii. and iv. lay
before him in a fixed i.e. in a written—form of narrative
^ with which it would also seem necessary to com-
bine chap. V. 1-11. It may, moreover, be maintained
that chapter xii. depends upon a written document, both
on account of its introduction, the brevity of which
would be otherwise incomprehensible, and because of
other phenomena it presents. It is not so probable
that the passage x. 1-xi. 18 depends upon a written
tradition, and such an hypothesis is quite uncertain
in the case of chaps, viii. and ix. 32-43. It is not,
however, necessary to imagine that because some of
these passages with great probability are based upon
written tradition, it therefore follows that the same
hypothesis must be extended to all the rest. How-
ever probable it is that the passages we have included
under A form a certain homogeneous whole, it cannot
be shown that in matters of form this unity is so
. complete that it is not possible to suppose that some
* Note also that it is only here that our Lord is called 6 vah
deoO {vide $uj>ra)—an important point I