The Acts of the Apostles

WRITTEN OR ORAL SOURCES 245
Cornelius were not related as stages leading up
to the mission to the Gentiles, but simply as stories
concerning St. Peter and St. PhiHp.^ It was only
the way in which St. Luke has used them for his
history that first gave them their appearance of
stages. Lastly, the facts referred to in chapter xii.
may be said to depend upon genuine and trustworthy
tradition.
V. It now only remains for us to conclude with the
investigation of the extensive Jerusalem-Antiochean
source (vi. 1-viii. 4; xi. 19-30; xii. 25 [xiii. 1]-
XV. 35). In favour of the written character of this
source we may adduce the following weighty con-
siderations :
—
(1) The abrupt fashion in which it begins at vi. 1,
indeed in which it begins everywhere, when it starts
afresh. Note especially the verbal identity of viii. 4
and xi. 19.
(2) Certain terminological and other differences,
though not many, which exist between it and the
remaining portions of the first half of the Acts.
(3) The consideration that the speech of St. Stephen
seems to have been edited (though not to the extent
assumed by Weiss), and that its conclusion seems to
have been curtailed.
(4) The consideration that ix. 19—80 looks like an
extract ; while on the other hand xiii. 4—xiv. 28 gives
the impression of having been expanded from shorter
records.
^ For this very reason the ordinary objections that are advanced
against an historical nucleus in the story of Cornelius fall to the
ground.