as Zahn points out, than that the man who wrote Luke 1. 1-4 should go to school and learn from Josephus? (Cf. C. Apion., i., 9; Ant., xx., 12.) But again what can we expect from an author who can find a parallel between Luke ii. 42 and Jos., Vita, 2? (See Gloél, Die jiingste Kritik des Galaterbriefes, p. 65.) The ‘‘We” sections equally with the other parts of the book coniain many points of contact with Josephus, and Krenkel is somewhat puzzled to explain this, p. 281 ; but when we consider that Jcsephus has given us a long description of his own voyage to Rome, and of his shipwreck on the way, Vita, 3, it was only to be expected that similar nautical terms would be found in the two narratives, and some similarity of description, and the two accounts help to show us how easily and naturally two writers narrating the same experiences would aay themselves in the same style and language.
But this question of the author’s relation to Josephus is also important in its bearing upon the date of Acts.
The Antiquities of Josephus are placed at 93, 94 a.p., and if it could be proved that traces of dependence on the Jewish historian may be found in the third Gospel, those who maintain that a considerable period of time elapsed between the writing of that book and of Acts would be obliged to place the latter work some tew years later still. But here again we may see the uncertainty which prevails when conclusions are built upon such data. Wendt (p. 40) can find no sure traces of any acquaintance with Josephus in the third Gospel, and so he inclines to date Acts in the interval between 95 and 100 a.p. (although he admits the possibility of a later date still). But 95, 96 a.p. would place the book under Domitian, and the question arises as to whether it can be said with any certainty that Acts was composed at a time when the Christians had gone through such a period of persecution as marked the close of that emperor’s reign. Harnack decides without hesitation in the negative, Chron., 1, pp. 248-250, and whilst he gives 93 as the terminus ad quem, it is satisfactory to find that he holds that the book may have been composed between 80 and 93 Α.Ρ, The limit which he thus fixes Harnack regards as in approximate agreement with his other argument (see above) against the later date of Acts, vzz., its non-use of St. Paul’s Epistles, a fact which alone would prevent us from dating the book in the second century (p. 249). So far as date is concerned, Ramsay would seem to occupy to some extent the same position, at least approximately, for he maintains that the book could not possibly have been written as late as the reign of Trajan, when the Church had long suffered persecution from the State, or even by