Acts

THE ACTS OF

THE APOSTLES

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INTRODUCTION

THIS book is to the Gospels what the fruit is to the tree that bears

it. In the Gospels we see the corn of wheat falling into the ground and

dying: in the Acts we see it bringing forth much fruit

(Joh 12:24).

There we see Christ purchasing the Church with His own blood: here we

see the Church, so purchased, rising into actual existence; first among

the Jews of Palestine, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, until

it gains a footing in the great capital of the ancient world--sweeping

majestically from Jerusalem to Rome. Nor is this book of less value as

an Introduction to the Epistles which follow it, than as a Sequel to

the Gospels which precede it. For without this history the Epistles of

the New Testament--presupposing, as they do, the historical

circumstances of the parties addressed, and deriving from these so much

of their freshness, point, and force--would in no respect be what they

now are, and would in a number of places be scarcely intelligible.

The genuineness, authenticity, and canonical authority of this book

were never called in question within the ancient Church. It stands

immediately after the Gospels, in the catalogues of the

Homologoumena, or universally acknowledged books of the New Testament

(see Introduction to our larger Commentary, Vol. V, pp. iv, v). It

was rejected, indeed, by certain heretical sects in the second and

third centuries--by the Ebionites, the Severians (see EUSEBIUS,

Ecclesiastical History, 4.29), the Marcionites, and the Manicheans:

but the totally uncritical character of their objections (see

Introduction above referred to, pp. xiii, xiv) not only deprives them

of all weight, but indirectly shows on what solid grounds the Christian

Church had all along proceeded in recognizing this book.

In our day, however, its authenticity has, like that of all the

leading books of the New Testament, been made the subject of keen and

protracted controversy. DE

WETTE, while admitting Luke to be the author

of the entire work, pronounces the earlier portion of it to have been

drawn up from unreliable sources

(New-Testament Introduction, 2a, 2C). But the Tubingen school,

with BAUR at their head, have gone much farther. As their fantastic

theory of the post-Joannean date of the Gospels could not pretend even

to a hearing so long as the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles

remained unshaken, they contend that the earlier portion of this work

can be shown to be unworthy of credit, while the latter portion is in

flat contradiction to the Epistle to the Galatians--which this school

regard as unassailable--and bears internal evidence of being a designed

distortion of facts for the purpose of setting up the catholic form

which Paul gave to Christianity in opposition to the narrow Judaic but

original form of it which Peter preached, and which after the death of

the apostles was held exclusively by the sect of the Ebionites. It is

painful to think that anyone should have spent so many years, and,

aided by learned and acute disciples in different parts of the

argument, should have expended so much learning, research, and

ingenuity in attempting to build up a hypothesis regarding the

origination of the leading books of the New Testament which outrages

all the principles of sober criticism and legitimate evidence. As a

school, this party at length broke up: its head, after living to find

himself the sole defender of the theory as a whole, left this earthly

scene complaining of desertion. While some of his associates have

abandoned such heartless studies altogether for the more congenial

pursuits of philosophy, others have modified their attacks on the

historical truth of the New Testament records, retreating into

positions into which it is not worth while to follow them, while others

still have been gradually approximating to sound principles. The one

compensation for all this mischief is the rich additions to the

apologetical and critical literature of the books of the New Testament,

and the earliest history of the Christian Church, which it has drawn

from the pens of THIERSCH,

EBRARD, and many others. Any allusions

which it may be necessary for us to make to the assertions of this

school will be made in connection with the passages to which they

relate--in Acts, First Corinthians, and Galatians.

The manifest connection between this book and the third Gospel--of

which it professes to be simply the continuation by the same

author--and the striking similarity which marks the style of both

productions, leave no room to doubt that the early Church was right in

ascribing it with one consent to Luke. The difficulty which some

fastidious critics have made about the sources of the earlier portion

of the history has no solid ground. That the historian himself was an

eye-witness of the earliest scenes--as HUG concludes from the

circumstantiality of the narrative--is altogether improbable: but there

were hundreds of eye-witnesses of some of the scenes, and enough of all

the rest, to give to the historian, partly by oral, partly by written

testimony, all the details which he has embodied so graphically in his

history; and it will appear, we trust, from the commentary, that De

Wette's complaints of confusion, contradiction, and error in this

portion are without foundation. The same critic, and one or two others,

would ascribe to Timothy those later portions of the book in which the

historian speaks in the first person plural--"we"; supposing him to

have taken notes of all that passed under his own eye, which Luke

embodied in his history just as they stood. It is impossible here to

refute this gratuitous hypothesis in detail; but the reader will find

it done by EBRARD (The Gospel History, sect. 110, Clark's

translation; sect. 127 of the original work,

Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangelische Geschichte, 1850), and by

DAVIDSON (Introduction to New Testament, Vol. II, pp. 9-21).

The undesigned coincidences between this History and the Apostolic

Epistles have been brought out and handled, as an argument for the

truth of the facts thus attested, with unrivalled felicity by PALEY in his Horæ Paulinæ, to which

Mr. BIRKS has made a number of ingenious

additions in his Horæ Apostolicæ. Exception has been

taken to some of these by JOWETT (St. Paul's

Epistles, Vol. I, pp. 108 ff.), not without a measure of reason in

certain cases--for our day, at least--though even he admits that in

this line of evidence the work of PALEY, taken as

a whole, is unassailable.

Much has been written about the object of this history. Certainly

"the Acts of the Apostles" are but very partially recorded. But for

this title the historian is not responsible. Between the two

extremes--of supposing that the work has no plan at all, and that it is

constructed on an elaborate and complex plan, we shall probably be as

near the truth as is necessary if we take the design to be to record

the diffusion of Christianity and the rise of the Christian Church,

first among the Jews of Palestine, the seat of the ancient Faith, and

next among the surrounding Gentiles, with Antioch for its headquarters,

until, finally, it is seen waving over imperial Rome, foretokening its

universal triumph. In this view of it, there is no difficulty in

accounting for the almost exclusive place which it gives to the labors

of Peter in the first instance, and the all but entire disappearance

from the history both of him and of the rest of the Twelve after the

great apostle of the Gentiles came upon the stage--like the lesser

lights on the rise of the great luminary.