6 The Acts of the Apostles. Chap. I.
is compared with the reminiscences of an able and highly educated actor in the same scenes, and when the comparison consists chiefly in a laboured proof that the discrepancies do not amount to positive contradiction, the conclusion is very near, that, if the reminiscences are strictly honest, the historian's picture is not of the highest rank.
But there is a further difficulty. How does it come that a writer, who shows himself distinctly second-rate in his historical perception of the comparative import- ance of events, is able to attain such remarkable accuracy in describing many of them ? The power of accurate description implies in itself a power of reconstructing the past, which involves the most delicate selection and group- ing of details according to their truth and reality, i.e., according to their comparative importance. Acts, as Light- foot pictures it, is to me an inconceivable phenomenon ; such a mixture of strength and weakness, of historical insight and historical incapacity, would be unique and incredible. If the choice for an intelligible theory of Acts lay between Lightfoot's view and that which is presented in different forms by Clemen, Spitta, and other scholars, I could only adopt the same point of view as these critics. Lightfoot, with all his genius, has here led English scholarship into a cut de sac : we can make no progress, unless we retrace our steps and try a new path. But my belief is, that all the difficulties in which Lightfoot was involved spring from the attempt to identify the wrong events. In this attempt he naturally found discrepancies ; but by a liberal allowance of gaps in the narrative of Acts, and the supposition of different points of view and of deficient information on Luke's
Sec. i Trustworthiness.
part, it was possible to show why the eye-witness saw one set of incidents, while Acts described quite a different set.
The historian who is to give a brief history of a great period need not reproduce on a reduced uniform scale all the facts which he would mention in a long history, like a picture reduced by a photographic process. If a brief history is to be a work of true art, it must omit a great deal, and concentrate the reader's attention on a certain number of critical points in the development of events, elaborating these sufficiently to present them in life-like and clearly intelligible form. True historical genius lies in selecting the great crises, the great agents, and the great movements, in making these clear to the reader in their real nature, in passing over with the lightest and slightest touch numerous events and many persons, but always keeping clear before the reader the plan of composition. The historian may dismiss years with a word, and devote considerable space to a single incident. In such a work, the omission of an event does not constitute a gap, but is merely a proof that the event had not sufficient importance to enter into the plan. A gap is some omission that offends our reason and our sense of harmony and propriety ; and where something is omitted that bears on the author's plan, or where the plan as conceived by the author does not correspond to the march of events, but only to some fanciful and subjective view, there the work falls short of the level of history.
I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without any prejudice in favour of the conclusion which I shall now attempt to justify to the reader, On the con-
8 The Acts of the Apostles, Chap. I.
trary, I began with a mind unfavourable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen theory had at one time quite convinced me. It did not lie then in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself often brought in contact with the book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvellous truth. In fact, beginning with the fixed idea that the work was essentially a second-century composition, and never relying on its evidence as trust worthy for first-century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investiga- tions. But there remained still one serious objection to accepting it as entirely a first-century work. According to the almost universally accepted view, this history led Paul along a path and through surroundings which seemed to me historically and topographically self-contradictory. It was not possible to bring Paul's work in Asia Minor into accordance with the facts of history on the supposition that an important part of that work was devoted to a district in the northern part of the peninsula, called Galatia. It may appear at first sight a mere topographi- cal subtlety whether Paul travelled through North Galatia or through Lycaonia ; but, when you consider that any details given of his journeys must be false to the one side just in proportion as they are true to the other, you will perceive that, if you try to apply the narrative to the wrong side of the country, it will not suit the scene, and if it does not suit, then it must appear to be written by a person ignorant of what he pretends to know. The case might be illustrated from our own experience. Suppose