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ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
Council (Ac 15), as contrasted with the complete silence of the Epistles as to this agreement.
If these four propositions were sound, they would certainly be strong evidence against the Lucan authorship of Acts. But there is much to be said against each of them on the following lines.
(a) In Ac 16^ St. Paul circumcises Timothy, but the reason given is that he was partly Jewish. There is no evidence in the Epistles that the Apostle would ever have refused circumcision to a Jew : it was part of the Law, and the Law was valid for Jews. The argument in the Epistles is that it is not valid for Gentiles ; and, though logic ought perhaps to have led St. Paul to argue that Jews also ought to abandon it, there is no proof that he ever did so. It is also claimed that the incident of Titus in Gal 2^ shows St. Paul's strong objection to circumcision ; but in the first place it is emphatically stated that Titus was not a Jew, and in tlie second place it is quite doubtful whether Gal 2'* means that Titus, being a Greek, was not compelled to be circumcised, or that, being a Greek, he was not compelled to be circum- cised, though as an act of grace he actually was circumcised. (^) It is quite true that in Ac 2P^^- St. Paul accepts Jewish custom : what is untrue is that it can be shown from his own writings that he was likely to refuse. (7) There certainly is an absence of ' Pauline ' doctrine in the speeches in the Acts, if we accept the reconstructions which are based on the view that in the Epistles we have a complete exposition of St. Paul's teaching. But, if we realize that the Epistles represent his treat- ment by letter of points which he had failed to bring home to his converts while he was with them, or of special controversies due to the arrival of other teachers, there is really nothing to be said against the picture given in the Acts. (5) If the exegesis and text of Acts be adopted which regard the Apostolic decrees as a compromise based on food-laws, it is certainly very strange that St. Paul should have said nothing about it in Galatians or Corinthians, and this undoubtedly affords a reasonable argument for thinking that the account in Ac 15 is unhistorical, and that it cannot have been the work of Luke. But it must be remembered that there is serious reason for doubting (i.) that the text and exegesis of Ac 15^ point either to a food-law or to a compromise, (ii. ) that Galatians was written after the Council (see G. Resch, 'Das Aposteldecret,' TU xxviii. [1905] 3 ; J. Wellhausen, ' Noten zur Apostel- geschichte,' in GGN, Gottingen, 1907; A. Harnack, Apostelge.ichichte, Leipzig, 1908, p. 188 ff. ; K. Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, London, 1911, pp. 29ff.,48ff.).
(2) Rather more serious are the objections raised to the accuracy of certain definite statements, in the light of contrasting statements in the Epistles, and the conclusion suggested that the writer of Acts cannot have been a companion of St. Paul. Many objections of this kind have been made, but tlie majority are trivial, and the serious ones are really only the following : (a) the description of glossolalia in Ac 2 as compared with 1 Co 12 tl. ; (b) the account of St. Paul's visits to Jerusalem in Acts as compared with Gal 2 ; (c) the movements of St. Paul's companions in Macedonia and Achaia in Ac 17'» 18' as compared with 1 Th 3"-8.
(a) The account given of glossolalia in 1 Co 14 shows that it was in the main unintelligible to ordinary jjersons. • He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself, but he that prophesieth edifieth the congregation ' (1 Co 14'' ; cf. vv.*- "• ^) ; 'If any man speaketh in a tongue let one interjnet' (1 Co 14^"). On the other hand, the narrative in Ac 2 describes the glossolalia of the disciples as a miraculous gift of speech that was simultaneously
intelligible to foreigners of various nations, each of whom thought that he was listening to his own language. It is argued that this latter glossolalia is as unknown to the historian of psychology as the glossolalia described in 1 Cor. is well known ; and it is suggested that Luke or his source has given a wrong account of the matter. In support of this it must be noted that the immediate judg- ment of the crowd, on first hearing the glossolalia of the disciples, was that they were drunk, and Peter's speech was directed against this imputa- tion. It is not probable that any foreigner ever accused any one of being drunk because he could understand him, and so far the account in Acts may be regarded as carrjnng its own conviction, and showing that behind the actual text there is an earlier tradition which described a glossolalia of the same kind as that in 1 Co 12-14. But, if so, is it probable that a companion of St. Paul would have put forward so ' un-Pauline ' a description of glossolalia ? There is certainly some weight in this argument ; but it is to a large extent discounted by the following considerations. (a) It is not known that Luke was ever with St. Paul at any exhibition of glossolalia. Certainly there is no- thing in Acts to suggest that he was in Corinth. (/3) In all probability we have to deal with a tra- dition which the writer of Acts found in existence in Jerusalem more than twenty years after the events described. Let any one try to find out, by asking surviving witnesses, exactly what happened at an excited revivalist meeting twenty years ago, and he will see that there is room for considerable inaccuracy. (7) To us glossolalia of the Pauline type is a known phenomenon and probable for that reason ; it is a purely physical and almost patho- logical result of religious emotion, while glossolalia of the ' foreign language ' type as described in Acts is improbable. But to a Christian of the 1st cent, both were wonderful manifestations of the Spirit, and neither was more probable than the other.