pp. 414, 423; Dalman, Die Worte $esu, p. 31, 1898.1 If it be main- tained that the earlier chapters of Acts, i.-v., were incorporated from some earlier document, it is admitted that this was of Jewish- Christian origin, derived from the Jewish Church through an eye-witness (cf. B. Weiss, Einleitung, p. 549, 3rd edit.; Feine, 1. s., p. 233). Thus in these chapters, ¢.g., the Sadducees appear as the chief opponents of the new faith, cf. note on iv. 1, and the members of the hierarchy are represented as in the main members of the same sect, a fact which strikes us as strange, but which is in strict accordance with the testimony of Josephus. A careful con- sideration of the speeches and of their appropriateness to their various occasions tends more and more surely to refute the notion that they are fictitious addresses, the work of a writer of the second century. The testimony of Dr. McGiffert may be cited as bearing witness to the primitive character of the reports of the speeches of St. Peter in the early chapters of Acts, and for the truthful manner in which they represent a very early type of Christian teaching (see comment., p. 119), and cf. also the remarks of Schmiedel, Enc. Bibl., i., 48, 1899.
At the delivery of St. Stephen’s speech Paul himself was present, xxvi. 10, cf. vi. 12, and there is good reason for thinking that the speech made a deep impression upon him (see, ¢.g., Felten, A fos- telgeschichte, p. 31), while the many Lucan expressions and turns of thought which it contains (cf. Zeller, Acts, ii., p. 313, Ε.Τ., - and Overbeck, Apostelgeschichte, p. 93) are natural enough! if the address comes to us through the medium of a translation (see commentary for the speech and its meaning).
For the second part of the book we perceive that St. Luke might have easily obtained accurate reports of the speeches even in cases where he was not present ; ¢.g., the speech at the Pisidian Antioch, chap. xili., gives us what we may well regard as a familiar example of St. Paul’s teaching on many similar occasions (cf. also in com- mentary the striking resemblances recently noted by Professor Ramsay between this speech and the Galatian Epistle). The ad- dresses at Lystra and at Athens delivered to heathen, so wonder- fully adapted to the audience in each place, in the one instance appealing to a more popular and ruder, in the latter to a more learned and philosophic class of hearers (‘‘ ita sunt omnia et loco et
1Dr. Dalman’s sharp distinction between Aramaisms and Hebraisms should be noted, p. 16 ff., whilst he allows that the pure Hebraisms in the Gospels are almost exclusively peculiar to that of St. Luke, and that by these peculiarities of diction Acts is also marked, p. 29; see further in commentary.