The Acts of the Apostles

INTRODUCTION xxix
preached the Gospel to Greeks and formed them
into a Christian community; of the college of Elders
at the head of the Church in Jerusalem who made
no protest when Christians from Jerusalem went to
distant Antioch and demanded that the Gentile
Christians in that city should be circumcised ; lastly,
of that same college of Elders who found themselves
compelled to recognise the Gentile mission in the
face of the grand fait accompli which St. Paul and
St. Barnabas had brought about in South-eastern
Asia Minor*—all these records bear the stamp of
historical truth. And if towards the close of his
narrative he remarks by the way that the great
majority of Christians in Jerusalem were still zealous
of the Law, and needed to be protected from the
danger of yielding credence to calumnious charges
against St. Paul—how can he be accused of concealing
the true course of events ? Though he may
indeed have erred elsewhere in this or in that par-
ticular point, he cannot be charged with a definite
bias or with a want of knowledge obscuring his
whole presentation of the history. If he is silent
upon many points on which we to-day would gladly
have information, this surely cannot be justly
reckoned to his discredit!
And the less so seeing that he has confined
himself strictly to the theme which he had marked
out for himself. The seeming gaps in his narra-
tive become no gaps for us so soon as we realise
* Chapters xiii. and xiv. are simply written to prepare for
chapter xv., and what they relate must b© interpreted in the
light of that chapter.