The Acts of the Apostles

EXCURSUS V 293
What, then, is to be said in favour of the Acts
(and therefore also of the gospel) having been already
written at the beginning of the seventh decade of the
first century. There are, in my opinion, the following
very weighty considerations :
(1) The great difficulty presented by the conclusion
of the Acts is undoubtedly removed in the simplest
way if St. Luke wrote his work soon after the two
years which St. Paul spent in Rome, and thus while
the Apostle was still alive.-^ We can also explain
away this difficulty on other hypotheses (vide supra,
pp. 2tSff.)—for it must be explained!—but none of
them are quite satisfactory or very illuminating.
(2) The discrepancy of the passage. Acts xx. 25
" Ye will see my face no more " (cf. xx. 38), with
the genuine information given in 2 Timothy is thus
by their disciples or acquaintances. Does any one deny that Xenophon
was personally acquainted with Socrates because his Memora-
bilia is such a defective work and betrays so little of the spirit of
the great thinker? Or does any one deny such acquaintance to
Plato because he has so drawn the portrait of Socrates with such
freedom in his dialogues ? Or must we refuse to ascribe the Life
of Constantine to Eusebius because it contains much that is of
questionable authority concerning the emperor? Need I even
mention the case of Sulpicius Severus and Martin of Tours, or of
Athanasius and Anthony ?
—
^ I do see see that in any passage of the book St. Peter and St.
Paul are so treated that we may presume that they were already
dead ; rather the contrary. In xi. 24 we read of St. Barnabas : 8ti
fjv dvrjp dyadbs Kal irXripTis irvevfxaTos dylov. It seems, therefore, to be
presupposed that he was already dead. But even this inference is
unsafe; compare xxi. 9: ^L\iwir(p ^aav Ovyar^pes Ticaape^.—It has
been remarked above on p. 41 that the Acts could not have been
written at the close of the Ster/a spoken of in the last verse ; but
the book could very well have been composed after these two years
had elapsed, and before the death of the Apostle in Rome.
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