methods of which a Thucydides, a Polybius, a Josephus availed themselves to make their personal relation to the facts narrated known to their readers (Zahn, Einleitung, ti., pp. 387, 426, 435).
This unknown author of Acts, moreover, whoever he was, was a man of such literary skill that he was able to assimilate the ‘‘ We”’ sections to the rest of his book, and to introduce cross references from them to other parts of his work, 6.σ., xxi. 8 and vi. 5; and yet, with all this, he is so deficient in literary taste as to allow the first person plural in the “ We”’ sections to remain, a blunder avoidable by a stroke of his pen.
The German philologist, Vogel, who cannot be accused of speaking with a theological bias, states the common-sense view of the matter in pointing out that when an author of such literary skill as the author of Acts undoubtedly possessed passes without a break from the third to the first person in his narrative, every unprejudiced reader will explain it on the ground that the author thus wished modestly to intimate his own personal presence during certain events. This is the one natural explanation, and to this Vogel determines to adhere, until it is shown to be untenable ; and he justly pours ridicule upon the notion that the author of Acts would have interwoven into a work written in such a delicate and finished style the travel-diary of some other person without altering the pronouns (Charakteristik des Lukas nach Sprache und Stil, pp. 12, 13).
If we are asked to believe that this first person plural was intro- duced from time to time merely for the purpose of giving an air of verisimilitude to the narrative (or in imitation of certain passages in Ezra and Nehemiah, or Tobit),! why should we not find it in the account, ο.σ., of St. Peter’s escape from prison, chap. xii., where Wendt maintains that the author probably had possession of a narrative full of details, derived probably from John Mark himself ? There can be no doubt that the ‘“‘ We” sections are introduced for the definite purpose of marking the writer’s presence with St. Paul; we cannot, 6.5., conclude that there is any other reason for the circum- stance that the ‘‘ We” section of chap. xvi. breaks off at Philippi, and that the following “ We” section, chap. xx., commences again at Philippi. But if this is so, how again could a later unknown writer have gained possession of a document of such high value as that comprising or embodying these “λε” sections? A day-journal
1 See Weiss, Einleitung, p. 583, and Overbeck (De Wette, 4th edition), p. xliv., who both point out that the cases are not analogous, although, on the other hand, Hilgenfeld and Wendt have recently pressed them into service.