The revolt of Theudas was thus most probably later than the speech of Gamaliel, and the refer- ence to it must be a literary device on the part of Luke, who no doubt used the speeches which he puts into the mouths of the persons in his nariative with the same freedom as was customary among writers of that period. But the remarkable point is that Josephus in Ant. XX. also mentions Judas of Galilee after speaking of Theudas ; * and the suggestion is that Luke had seen this and was led into the not unnatural mistake of confusing the dates. He apparently knew the correct date of Judas, and remembered only that Josephus had spoken of him after Theudas, and was thus led into the mistake of thinking that Theudas must have been earlier than Judas.
If the case of Theudas be admitted, it is also possible that in the descrii)tion of the death of Ilerod Agrippa some details have been taken by Luke from the description of the death of Herod the
* After describing Theudas' revolt, Josephus continues :_7rpbs T0UT019 5c KoX ol TraiSe? 'loiv^a ToO TaKiKaiov ai'T)xOi)(Ta>', ToC Tov Ka'av O.TTO 'Pai/Jiaiiuv d7roa-n)(rarT05 KvpifCov tt)? 'Iou6aias TifiiJTe- voi'T05, tu? cu TOt? npo TOVToji' t8ii}\ui{TafX€Vf *Ia»caj/3o? kol ^t^u>v oi)f OLVaaTavphMTai. 7Tpo<T(Ta^ev 6 'AAefavSpos (Ant. XX. V. 2).
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
21
Great as given by Josephus. But the evidence is here much less striking, and, if Tlieudas be not conceded, has no real strength. The case of Theudas is, however, very remarkable ; it falls short of demonstration, but not so far short as the other arguments for dating tlie Acts.
So far it has been assumed that Luke was the writer of Acts ; and in this case the probable length of his life gives the terminus ad quern for dating his writings, i.e. c, A.D. 100. If his author- ship be disputed, the terminus ad quern is the earliest known use of the book or of its companion Gospel. This is to be found in the fact that Marcion (c. A.D. 140) used the Gospel of Luke. It is, of course, possible that some of the isolated Evangelical quotations in the Apostolic Fathers may be from Luke ; but no proof of this can be given. As, however, Marcion's text is a redaction of the canonical text, and Luke's Gospel was taken into the Four-Gospel Canon not long after- wards, it must have been in existence some time previously, so that, even if the Lucan authorship be doubted, A.D. 130 is the latest date that can reasonably be suggested. Even this appears to be very improbable if attention be paid to some of the characteristics of Acts. For instance, Acts never uses the triadic formula : baptism is always in the name 'of the Lord,' or 'of Jesus' ; there is no trace of the developed Docetic controversy of the Johannine Epistles or of Ignatius ; xp'O'^^s is habitually used predicatively, and not as a proper name, and in this respect Acts is more primitive than St. Paul.
On the other hand, the weakening of the eschato- logical element, and the interest in the Church, as an institution in a world which is not immediately to disappear, point away from the very early date advocated by Harnack and others. The decennium 90-100 seems, on the whole, the most probable date, but demonstrative proof is lacking, and it may have been written thirty years earlier, or (but only if the Lucan authorship be abandoned) thirty years later.
4. Reception in the Canon. — There is no trace of any collection of Christian sacred books which included the Four-Gospel Canon, but omitted the Acts. That is to say, througliout the Catholic Church within the Roman Empire, Acts was uni- versally received as the authoritative and inspired continuation of the Gospel story.
It appears also probable that in the Church of Edessa Acts was used from the earliest time as the continuation of the Diatessaron, for the Doctrine of Added specifies as the sacred books 'the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel . . . and the Epistles of Paul . . . and the Acts of the Twelve Apostles,' of which the last item probably means the canon- ical Acts (see F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Chris- tianity, London, 1904, p. 59).
Moreover, the Marcionites and other Gnostic Christians do not appear to have ever used the Acts. Later on the Manichseans seem to have used a corpus of the five Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew, and Thomas, as a substitute for the canonical Acts ; and the Priscillianists in Spain so far adopted this usage as to accept this corpus as an adjunct to the canonical Acts. (For the more detailed consideration of these Acts, both as a corpus and as separate documents, see ACTS OF THE Apostles [Apocryphal]. )
IV. The Composition of Acts.— The ques- tion of the composition of this or any other book is one partly of fact, partly of theory. In the sense of determining the arrangement of the sec- tions, and the relations which they bear to one another, it is a question of fact and observation ; but, when the question is raised why the sections are so arranged, and how far they represent older
sources used by the writer, it becomes a question of theory and criticism.