[20] 4. THE AUTHOR OF ACTS AND HIS HERO. It is rare to find a narrative so simple and so little forced as that of Acts. It is a mere uncoloured recital of the important facts in thebriefest possible terms. The narrator's individuality and his personal feelings and preferences are almost wholly suppressed. He is entirely absorbed in his work; and he writes with the single aim to state the facts as he has learned them. It would be difficult in the whole range of literature to find a work where there is less attempt at pointing a moral or drawing [21] a lesson from the facts. The narrator is persuaded that the facts themselves in their barest form are a perfect lesson and a complete instruction, and he feels that it would be an impertinence and even an impiety to intrude his individual views into the narrative.

It is, however, impossible for an author to hide himself completely. Even in the selection of details, his personality shows itself. So in Acts, the author shows the true Greek feeling for the sea. He hardly ever omits to name the harbors which Paul sailed from or arrived at, even though little or nothing in the way of incident occurred in them. But on land journeys he confines himself to missionary facts, and gives no purely geographical information; where any statements of a geographical character occur, they serve a distinct purpose in the narrative, and the reader who accepts them as mere geographical specifications has failed to catch the author's purpose (see p. 205 f.).

Under the surface of the narrative, there moves a current of strong personal affection and enthusiastic admiration for Paul. Paul is the author's hero; his general aim is to describe the development of the Church; but his affection and his interest turn to Paul; and after a time his narrative groups itself round Paul. He is keenly concerned to show that Paul was in perfect accord with the leaders among the older Apostles, but so also was Paul himself in his letters. That is the point of view of a personal friend and disciple, full of affection, and jealous of Paul's honour and reputation.

The characterisation of Paul in Acts is so detailed and individualised as to prove the author's personal acquaintance. Moreover, the Paul of Acts is the Paul that appears to us in his own letters, in his ways and his thoughts, in his educated tone of polished courtesy, in his quick and [22] vehement temper, in the extraordinary versatility and adaptability which made him at home in every society, moving at ease in all surroundings, and everywhere the centre of interest, whether he is the Socratic dialectician in the agora of Athens, or the rhetorician in its University, or conversing with kings and proconsuls, or advising in the council on shipboard, or cheering a broken-spirited crew to make one more effort for life. Wherever Paul is, no one present has eyes for any but him.

Such a view could not have been taken by a second century author. The Church in the second century had passed into new circumstances and was interested in quite different questions. The catastrophe of the persecution of Domitian, and the effect produced for the time on the attitude of the Church by the deliberate attempt to suppress and destroy it on the part of the imperial government, made a great gulf between the first century and the second century of Christian history. 1 Though the policy of the great emperors of the second century came back to somewhat milder measures, the Church could not recover the same feeling that Paul had, so long as Christianity continued to be a proscribed religion, and a Christian was in theoryat least an outlaw and a rebel. Many questions that were evidently vital to the author of Acts were buried in oblivion during the persecution of Domitian, and could not have been present in the mind of a later author. Our view classes Acts with 1 Peter, intermediate between the Pauline letters and the literature of the last decade of the century (such as Revelation). Luke shows the same attitude as Paul, but he aims at proving what Paul feels.

[23] The question must be fairly considered whether Luke had completed his history. There is one piece of evidence from his own hand that he had not completed it, but contemplated a third book at least. His work is divided into two books, the Gospel and the Acts, but in the opening line of the Acts he refers to the Gospel as the First Discourse ({prõtos logos}). Had he not contemplated a third book, we expect the term Former Discourse({proteros}) In a marked position like the opening of a book, we must take the word first strictly (Note, p. 27).

We shall argue that the plan of Acts has been obscured by the want of the proper climax and conclusion, which would have made it clear, and also that the author did not live to put the final touches to his second book. Perhaps we may thus account for the failure of chronological data. In Book I there are careful reckonings of dates (in one case by several different eras) at the great steps of the narrative. In Book II there are no such calculations (except the vague "under Claudius"in XI 28, in itself a striking contrast to "the fifteenth year of Tiberius," Luke III 1). Tacitus, as we saw, appends the dates to his Agricola: Luke incorporates his dates, but they have all the appearance of being put into an already finished narrative. If other reasons prove that Acts wants the finishing touches, we may reckon among the touches that would have been added certain calculations of synchronism, which would have furnished a chronological skeleton for the narrative.

If the work was left incomplete, the reason, perhaps,. lay in the author's martyrdom under Domitian.

FOOTNOTES

1 Church in R. E., XIII.