The Acts of the Apostles

294 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
explained. St. Luke allows St. Paul to say, or St.
Paul said, something about his future which after-
wards proved to be incorrect. St. Luke, when he
wrote, could not as yet have known that it was an
incorrect prophecy.
(3) In the Acts the Jews never appear as oppressed
and persecuted, but rather as the persecutors. This
seems to me a very weighty argument ! How comes
it that the terrible events which befell this nation
since the second half of the seventh decade, and which
also affected the Diaspora, have left absolutely no
trace of themselves in this historical work.? The
Jews both in Jerusalem and in the Diaspora are
the heati possidentes! How remarkable it is that a
vivacious story-teller like St. Luke should remain so
«« objective *" that, simply because he is dealing with
the times before a.d. QQ, he gives no hint of the tremendous
change that came with the year a.d. 70
Though in xi. 28 he expressly notices that the pro-
phecy of the famine was actually fulfilled in the reign
of Claudius; yet this historian nowhere says that the
prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem was fulfilled,
and though at the close of his work he casts in the
teeth of the Jews the prophecy of Isaiah concerning
"the hardening of their hearts," yet he does not
think of referring to the terrible judgment that had
actually come upon the nation.
(4) But even in the case of the gospel, under the
assumption that the destruction of Jerusalem had
already taken place, by no means everything is quite
clear. With the prophecy of this destruction St.
Luke, like the other synoptists, still combines the
!