Tiie value of this tradition must necessarily de- pend on the internal evidence of the book itself. The arguments can best be arranged under the two heads of favourable and unfavourable to the tradition.
1. In favoar of the tradition of Lake's author- ship is the evidence of the ' Ave-sections,' or pass- ages in which the writer speaks in the first person. These are Ac 16'"-" 20^ 2^8 27' 28i«. They form together an apparent extract from a diary, which begins in Troas and breaks oft' in Philippi, on St. Paul's second journey ; begins again in Philippi, on his last journey to Jerusalem ; and continues (with only the apparent break of the episode of St. Paul and the Ephesian elders [20^®"^^] which is told in the third person) until Jerusalem is reached and St. Paul goes to see James ; then breaks oft" again during St. Paul's imprisonment in Jerusalem and Caesarea ; begins again when St. Paul leaves Caesarea ; and continues until the arrival in Kome, when it finally ceases.
It is, of course, theoretically possible that these sections are merely a literary fiction, but this possibility is excluded by the facts (a) that there is no conceivable reason why the writer should adopt this form of writing at these points, and these only, in his narrative ; (6) that by the general consent of critics these passages have all the signs of having really been composed by an eye-witness of the events described. It is, there-
* The de Rebaptismate has not yet been sufficiently studied from this point of view. A monograph analyzing its evidence on the lines of F. C. Burkitt's Old Latin and the Itala might be valuable.
VOL. I. — 2
fore, only necessary to consider the other possi- bilities : (1) that we have here from the writer of the whole work the descri|)tion of incidents which he had himself seen ; (2) that the writer is here using an extract from the writing of an eye-wit- ness and has preserved the original idiom.
The only way of deciding between these two possibilities is to make use of literary criteria, and this has been done in recent years with especial thoroughness by Harnack in Germany and Hawkins in England. For any full statement of tiie case reference must be made to their books ; the prin- ciple, however, and the main results can be summarized.
If the writer of Acts is merely using the first person in order to show that he is claiming to have been an eye-witness, the writer of the ' we- clauses' is identical with the redactor of the Gospel and Acts. Now, in the Gospel we know that he was using Mark in many places, and, by noting the redactorial changes in the Marcan sec- tions of Luke, we can establish his preference for certain idioms. If these idioms constantly recur in the ' we-clauses,' it must be either because the ' we-clauses ' were written by the redactor, or be- cause the redactor also revised the 'we-clauses,' but without changing the idiom. As a fact we find that the ' we-clauses ' are more marked by the characteristic phraseology of the redactor than any other part of the Gospel or Acts. We are, therefore, apparently reduced to a choice between the theory that the redactor of the Gospel and Acts wrote the ' we-clauses,' and the theory that he redacted them with more care than any other part of his compilation, except that he allowed the first person to stand. The former view certainly seems the more probable, but not sufficient attention has been paid to the observation of E. Sclmrer (2'hLZ, 1906, col. 405) that the facts would also be ex- plained if the writer of the ' we-clauses ' and the redactor of Acts came from the same Bildungs- sphdre. It would be well if some later analyst would eliminate from both sides the idioms which are common to all writers of good Greek at the period, for undoubtedly an element of exaggera- tion is introduced by the fact that in the Marcan source there were many vulgarisms which all re- dactors would have altered, and mostly in the same way. It should also be noted that there are a few ' Lucanisms ' which are not to be found in the 'we-clauses.'
The details on which this argument is based will be found best in J. C. Hawkins, HorcB Synopticce^, Oxford, 1909, pp. 174- 193; A. Harnack, Lukas der Arzt, Leipzig, 1906, pp. 19-85. There is also a good r6sum6 in J. Moffatt, LNT, p. 294 £f.
2. Against the tradition it is urged ( 1 ) that the presentment of St. Paul is quite different from that in the Pauline Epistles, (2) that on definite facts of history the Acts and Epistles contradict each other ; and it is said in each case that these facts exclude the possibility that the writer of Acts was Luke the companion of St. Paul.
(1) The "presentment of St. Paul in the Epistles and in Acts. — It has been urged as a proof that the writer of Acts could not have been a companion of St. Paul, that whereas St. Paul in the Epistles is completely emancipated from Jewish thought and practice, he is represented in the Acts as still loyal to the Law himself, and enjoining its observ- ance on Jews. The points which are really crucial in this argument are (a) St. Paul's circumcision of Timothy (Ac 16^), as contrasted with his teaching as to circumcision in the Epistles ; (/3) his accept- ance of Jewish practice while he was in Jerusalem (Ac 2121^- )) as contrasted with his Epistles, espe- cially Galatians and Romans ; (7) the absence of ' Pauline ' doctrine in the speeches in Acts ; (5) St. Paul's acceptance of a compromise at the Apostolic