The Acts of the Apostles

40 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
inner life and growth of the Churches had evidently
no interest for him so far as the scope of the task he
had set himself was concerned, unless the hostility of
the Jews came into play or the authorities intervened
(vide supra). The difficulty of the passage, therefore,
lies by no means in the statement itself, but simply
in the fact that the book breaks off at this point.
And this fact is doubly strange ; firstly, in that the
author breaks off just at this place ; and secondly, in
that in breaking off, he at the very same moment hints
that the history of St. Paul had a further continuation;
for Blass and other scholars are justified in deciding
that the aorist ive/ueivev, taken together with the
chronological note, implies that after two years this
situation was brought to an end by St. Paul's leaving
Rome altogether or by his exchanging a condition of
comparative freedom for one of closer confinement.
It is indeed scarcely probable that the latter alterna-
tive is meant ; for if this situation of closer confinement
lasted only a very short time and led to the
execution of the Apostle, it is difficult to see why
his death is not recorded ; if, however, it lasted
for a longer time, we ask in vain why this time
was not included in the period of his residence in
Home. We are therefore left with the hypothesis—and
this the mostprobable— that the Apostle again left Rome; ^
for the hypothesis that St. Luke for political reasons
did not wish to recount the fatal issue of the trial of
St. Paul is not suggested by his attitude throughout
^ That this hypothesis is 6uppt»rted by the historical notices
concerning the Apostle in the second Epistle to Timothy may here
be only mentioned without further examination.