CHAPTER II. EVIDENCE REGARDING THE AUTHORSHIP

If we proceed further to discuss the document before us, it is from no doubt as to the certainty of the conclusion at which we have now arrived, but from the belief that closer examination of the contents of the Acts may enable us to test this result, and more fully to understand the nature of the work and the character of its evidence. Not only will it be instructive to consider a little closely the contents of the Acts, and to endeavour from the details of the narrative itself to form a judgment regarding its historical value, but we have in addition external testimony of very material importance which we may bring to bear upon it. We happily possess some undoubted Epistles which afford us no little information concerning the history, character, and teaching of the Apostle Paul, and we are thus enabled to compare the statements in the work before us with contemporary evidence of great value. It is unnecessary to say that, wherever the statements of the unknown author of the Acts are at variance with these Epistles, we must prefer the statements of the Apostle. The importance to our inquiry of such further examination as we now propose to undertake consists chiefly in the light which it may throw on the credibility of the work. If it be found that such

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portions as we are able to investigate are inaccurate and untrustworthy, it will become still more apparent that the evidence of such a document for miracles, which are antecedently incredible, cannot even be entertained. It may be well also to discuss more fully the authorship of the Acts, and to this we shall first address ourselves.

It must, however, be borne in mind that it is quite foreign to our purpose to enter into any exhaustive discussion of the literary problem presented by the Acts of the Apostles. We shall confine ourselves to such points as seem sufficient or best fitted to test the character of the composition, and we shall not hesitate to pass without attention questions of mere literary interest, and strictly limit our examination to such prominent features as present themselves for our purpose.

It is generally admitted, although not altogether without exception,(1) that the author of our third synoptic Gospel likewise composed the Acts of the Apostles. The linguistic and other peculiarities which distinguish the Gospel are equally prominent in the Acts. This fact, whilst apparently offering greatly increased facilities for identifying the author, and actually affording valuable material for estimating his work, does not, as we have already remarked, really do much towards solving the problem of the authorship, inasmuch as the Gospel, like its continuation, is anonymous, and we possess no more precise or direct evidence in connection with the one than in the case of the other. We have already so fully examined the testimony for the third Gospel that it is unnecessary for us to recur to it. From about the end of the second century we find the Gospel and Acts of the

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Apostles ascribed by ecclesiastical writers to Luke, the companion of the Apostle Paul. The fallibility of tradition, and the singular phase of literary morality exhibited during the early ages of Christianity, render such testimony of little or no value, and in the almost total absence of the critical faculty a rank crop of pseudonymic writings sprang up and flourished during that period.(1) Some of the earlier chapters of this work have given abundant illustrations of this fact. It is absolutely certain, with regard to the works we are considering, that Irenaeus is the earliest writer known who ascribes them to Luke, and that even tradition, therefore, cannot be traced beyond the last quarter of the second century. The question is--does internal evidence confirm or contradict this tradition?

Luke, the traditional author, is not mentioned by name in the Acts of the Apostles.(2) In the Epistle to Philemon his name occurs, with those of others, who send greeting, verse 23, "There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus; 24. Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow-labourers." In the Epistle to the Colossians, iv. 14, mention is also made of him:--"Luke, the beloved physician,(3) salutes you, and Demas." And again, in the 2 Epistle to Timothy, iv. 10:--"For

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Demas forsook me, having loved this present world, and departed into Thessalouica, Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia: 11. Only Luke is with me."

He is not mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament;(1) and his name is not again met with till Irenaeus ascribes to him the authorship of the Gospel and Acts. There is nothing in these Pauline Epistles confirming the statement of the Fathers, but it is highly probable that these references to him largely contributed to suggest his name as the author of the Acts, the very omission of his name from the work itself protecting him from objections connected with the passages in the first person to which other followers of Paul were exposed, upon the traditional view of the composition. Irenaeus evidently knew nothing about him, except what he learnt from these Epistles, and derives from his theory that Luke wrote the Acts, and speaks as an eye-witness in the passages where the first person is used. From these he argues that Luke was inseparable from Paul, and was his fellow-worker in the Gospel, and he refers, in proof of this, to Acts xvi. 8 ff.,(2) 13 ff., xx. 5 ff., and the later chapters, all the details of which he supposes Luke to have carefully written down. He then continues: "But that he was not only a follower, but likewise a fellow-worker of the Apostles, but particularly of Paul, Paul himself has also clearly shown in the Epistles, saying:..." and he quotes 2 Tim. iv. 10, 11, ending: "Only Luke is with me," and then adds, "whence he shows that he was

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always with him and inseparable from him, &c, Ac."(1) The reasoning of the zealous Father deduces a great deal from very little, it will be observed, and in this elastic way tradition "enlarged its borders" and assumed unsubstantial dimensions. Later writers have no more intimate knowledge of Luke, although Eusebius states that he was born at Antioch,(2) a tradition likewise reproduced by Jerome.(3) Jerome further identifies Luke with "the brother, whose praise in the Gospel is throughout all the churches" mentioned in 2 Cor. viii. 18, as accompanying Titus to Corinth.(4) At a later period, when the Church required an early artist for its service, Luke the physician was honoured with the additional title of painter.(5) Epiphanius,(6) followed later by some other

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writers, represented him to have been one of the seventy-two disciples, whose mission he alone of all New Testament writers mentions. The view of the Fathers, arising out of the application of their tradition to the features presented by the Gospel and Acts, was that Luke composed his Gospel, of the events of which he was not an eye-witness, from information derived from others, and his Acts of the Apostles from what he himself, at least in the parts in which the first person is employed, had witnessed.1 It is generally supposed that Luke was not born a Jew, but was a Gentile Christian.

Some writers endeavour to find a confirmation of the tradition, that the Gospel and Acts were written by Luke "the beloved physician," by the supposed use of peculiarly technical medical terms,(2) but very little weight is attached by any one to this feeble evidence which is repudiated by most serious critics, and it need not detain us.

As there is no indication, either in the Gospel or the Acts, of the author's identity proceeding from himself, and tradition does not offer any alternative security, what testimony can be produced in support of the ascription of

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these writings to "Luke"? To this question Ewald shall reply: "In fact," he says, "we possess only one ground for it, but this is fully sufficient. It lies in the designation of the third Gospel as that 'according to Luke' which is found in all MSS. of the four Gospels. For the quotations of this particular Gospel under the distinct name of Luke, in the extant writings of the Fathers, begin so late that they cannot be compared in antiquity with that superscription; and those known to us may probably themselves only go back to this superscription. We thus depend almost alone on this superscription."(1) Ewald generally does consider his own arbitrary conjectures "fully sufficient," but it is doubtful, whether in this case, any one who examines this evidence will agree with him. He himself goes on to admit, with all other critics, that the superscriptions to our Gospels do not proceed from the authors themselves, but were added by those who collected them, or by later readers to distinguish them.(2) There was no author's name attached to Marcion's Gospel, as we learn from Tertullian.(3) Chrysostom

very distinctly asserts that the Evangelists did not inscribe their names at the head of their works,(4) and he recognizes that, but for the authority of the primitive Church which added those names, the superscriptions could not have proved the authorship of the Gospels. He conjectures that the sole superscription which may

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have been placed by the author of the first Synoptic was simply [------].(1) It might be argued, and indeed has been, that the inscription [------], "according to Luke," instead of [------] "Gospel of Luke," does not actually indicate that "Luke" wrote the work any more than the superscription to the Gospels "according to the Hebrews" [------] "according to the Egyptians" [------] has reference to authorship. The Epistles, on the contrary, are directly connected with their writers, in the genitive, [------], and so on. This point, however, we merely mention _en passant_. By his own admission, therefore, the superscription is simply tradition in another form, but instead of carrying us further back, the superscription on the most ancient extant MSS., as for instance the Sinaitic and Vatican Codices of the Gospels, does not on the most sanguine estimate of their age, date earlier than the fourth century.(2) As for the Acts of the Apostles, the book is not ascribed to Luke in a single uncial MS., and it only begins to appear in various forms in later codices. The variation in the titles of the Gospels and Acts in different MSS. alone shows the uncertainty of the superscription. It is clear that the "one ground," upon which Ewald admits that the evidence for Luke's authorship is based, is nothing but sand, and cannot support his tower. He is on the slightest consideration thrown back upon the quotations of the Fathers, which begin too late for the

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purpose, and it must be acknowledged that the ascription of the third Gospel and Acts to Luke rests solely upon late and unsupported tradition.

Let it be remembered that, with the exception of the three passages in the Pauline Epistles quoted above, we know absolutely nothing about Luke. As we have mentioned, it has even been doubted whether the designation "the beloved physician" in the Epistle to the Colossians,