The Acts of the Apostles

xxxiv INTRODUCTION
of its hopes ; he was no revolutionary, " neither in
respect to the Jewish Law nor to the Temple nor
to Caesar." Here, however, the emphasis—this is
worthy of note !—is laid upon his relationship to the
Jewish religion {rwt to Caesar), and this is a further
proof that St. Luke still stood in very close personal
touch with the primitive times ; for what Hellene has
ever treated the Jewish religion and the Old Testament
piety, existing side by side with Christianity,
with such tender, indeed to us almost unintelligible,
respect as the author shows here and elsewhere in his
work ! It is not till we reach Irenagus that the
sympathy of the Gentile Church with Old Testament
piety becomes again awakened ; and this was an
artificial awakening, the exciting cause of which was
the conflict with Gnosticism.
There is another very important question which
presents itself in connection with the subject-matter
of the work—Why is it that St. Luke in working
out his theme, the extension of the Gospel to Rome,
has confined himself so exclusively to the ministry of
St. Paul? He must surely have known of several
provinces, wherein in his times Christians were found,
that had not been converted by St. Paul (he him-
self notes by the way that Apollos was won over to
Christianity in Alexandria). He must also have
known that the Gospel was not first brought to Rome
by St. Paul. In my opinion, the question can only
be answered by assuming that St. Luke's conception
of the term "Apostle," though not absolutely narrow,
was yet already very definite, and that in his narra-
tive of the propagation of the Gospel he is satisfied