left behind by an intimate companion of St. Paul must have been preserved long enough for this unknown writer to have incorporated it, or at least some of it, into his own work, and it must then have vanished altogether out of sight, although one would have supposed that a treasure so valuable would have been preserved and guarded in some Christian circle with the greatest care.!
But if we further ask who amongst the companions of St. Paul speaks to us in these ‘‘ We” sections, the testimony of critics of vari- ous schools—of critics who draw a distinction between the author- ship of the ‘“* We” sections and the rest of the book—may be quoted in favour of St. Luke as the author of the former, if not, as we be- lieve, of the latter also. Thus Holtzmann, Eznleitung *, pp. 394, 995, examines the question, and decides in favour of St. Luke as against the claims of Timothy, Silas, or Titus (so Overbeck (De Wette, 4th edit.), pp. L., li.; Mangold, Einlectung (Bleek), p. 445; Spitta, w. s., p. 912). Acts xx. 5, 6 may be fairly quoted as decisive against Timothy, to say nothing of the impossibility that the author of Acts should assume the character of a person in the ‘‘ We” sections, and by naming this same person elsewhere should thus distinguish him from himself (Overbeck). For Silas nothing can be said, and the advocacy of his claims is the most groundless of any of the three. He appears nowhere in the third missionary journey, an absence which would be fatally inconsistent with his presence in the “ We” sections, and he is nowhere named in any of the letters of the First Imprisonment, whereas the narrator of xxvii. 1-xxviii. 16 would naturally be found amongst the companions of the Apostle during that period (of course, if xi. 27, 28 in B-text be taken into account, both Timothy and Silas are thereby excluded, Zahn, Einleitung, ii., p. 425). The same objection may be made to Titus, since there is no hint that he was with St. Paul at Rome (even if we allow that he may have been included in the ἡμεῖς at Antioch, xi. 27, and that, as he is not mentioned at all in Acts, the difficulties which are presented by the names of Timothy and Silas do not occur in his case). Moreover, the travel-journey of Silas would have commenced rather with xv. 1, as Holtzmann urges; nor is: there any reason to suppose that Silas was at Philippi during the time required (Holtz-
1 This, no doubt, presents less difficulty to advanced critics who find it apparently easy to credit that the Pastoral Epistles contain fragments of genuine letters of St. Paul, and that these letters having supplied the fragments to the Pastorals were themselves no longer cared for or regarded (McGiffert, Apostolic Age, pp. 407, 408, and, on the other hand, Dr. Salmon. Intyod., p. 408).