We shall argue that the plan of Acts has been obscured by the want of the proper climax and conclusion, which would have made it clear, and also that the author did not live to put the final touches to his second book. Perhaps we may thus account for the failure of chronological data. In Book I there are careful reckonings of dates (in one case by several different eras) at the great steps of the narrative. In Book II there are no such calculations (except the vague “under Claudius” in XI 28, in itself a striking contrast to “the fifteenth year of Tiberius,” Luke III 1). Tacitus, as we saw, appends the dates to his Agricola: Luke incorporates his dates, but they have all the appearance of being put into an already finished narrative. If other reasons prove that Acts wants the finishing touches, we may reckon among the touches that would have been added certain calculations of synchronism, which would have furnished a chronological skeleton for the narrative.
If the work was left incomplete, the reason, perhaps,. lay in the author’s martyrdom under Domitian.
5. THE TEXTS OF ACTS. It was my wish to take no notice here of differences of reading, but simply to
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follow Westcott and Hort (except in two impossible cases, XI 20, XII 25). This, however, proved impracticable; for there are some cases in which over-estimate of the two great MSS. (the Sinaitic and the Vatican) has led to the adoption of a reading that obscures history. In several places I have been driven back on the Received Text and the Authorised Version, and in others the Bezan Text either contains or gives the clue to the original text; and wherever the Bezan Text is confirmed by old Versions and by certain Greek MSS., it seems to me to deserve very earnest consideration, as at least pointing in the direction of an original reading subjected to wide-spread corruption.
It is universally admitted that the text of Acts was exposed to very careless or free handling in the second century. This came about in various ways, for the most part unintentionally, but partly by deliberate action. At that time great interest was taken in gathering from trustworthy sources supplementary information, beyond what was contained in the Gospels and Acts. Eusebius, III 39, quotes a passage from Papias describing his eager inquiries after such information from those who had come into personal relations with the Apostles, and another, V 20, from Irenaeus, describing how Polycarp used to tell of his intercourse with John and the rest that had seen the Lord. Now there was a natural tendency to note on the margin of a MS. additional information obtained on good authority about incidents mentioned in the text; and there is always a danger that such notes may be inserted in the text by a copyist, who takes them for parts accidentally omitted. There is also a certain probability that deliberate addi-
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tions might be made to the text (as deliberate excisions are said to have been made by Marcion). The balance of evidence is, on the whole, that Mark XVI 9-20 is a later composition, designed to complete a narrative that had all the appearance of being defective. Again, explanatory notes on the margin of a MS. are often added by a reader interested in the text; there is no doubt that in some books such glosses have crept into the text through the errors of the copyist; and there are on our view three such cases at least in the generally accepted text of Acts.
But, beyond this, when translations were made into Syriac and Latin (the former certainly, the later probably, as early as the middle of the second century), the attention of scholars was necessarily directed to the difficulties in interpretation of the text, with its occasional archaic expressions, obscure words, and harsh constructions; and the practical usefulness of a simplified and modernised text was thus suggested. Tatian’s Harmony of the Four Gospels, and Marcion’s doctored editions, show how attempts were made from different points of view and in different ways to adapt the sacred narrative for popular use: Tatian changed the order, Marcion altered the text by excision or worse. Thus the plan of a simplified text was quite in keeping with the custom of the second century; and the Bezan Text seems to be of that kind. As a whole it is not Lukan: it has a fatal smoothness, it loses the rather harsh but very individual style of Luke, and it neglects some of the literary forms that Luke observed. But it has a high value for several reasons: (1) it preserves with corruptions a second-century witness to the text, and often gives valuable, and sometimes
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conclusive, evidence of readings; (2) it shows what view was held as to the meaning of various passages in the second century; (3) it adds several pieces of information which probably rest on good evidence, though they were not written by Luke. Thus we can often gather from the Bezan comment what was the original reading commented on; and it vindicates the great MSS. in XVI 12 against Dr. Hort’s conjecture. It reveals to us the first beginnings of Pauline legend (p. 106); and in this respect it stands on much the same level as the original text of the Acta of Paul and Thekla, where also it is hard to distinguish where history ends and romance begins. With the help of these two authorities, combined with early Christian inscriptions (which begin only about 190, but give retrospective evidence), we can recover some faint idea of the intellectual life of the second-century Christians in Asia Minor and North Syria.
The Bezan Text will, indubitably, afford much study and some discoveries in the future. Its explanatory simplifications often show the influence of the translations which first suggested the idea of a simplified text. When the need for an explanation arose in connection with a rendering in Latin, or in Syriac, the simplification took a Latin or Syriac colour; but this was consciously adopted as a simplification, and not through mere blundering.
While the Bezan Text has gone furthest from the original Lukan Text, there is no MS. which has not suffered seriously from the various causes of depravation. Several of the errors that have affected the two great MSS. look like changes made intentionally in order to suit a mistaken idea of the meaning of other passages; but there is always a possibility that in these cases an
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editor was making a choice between varieties of reading that had been produced unintentionally. Only in the Bezan Text can we confidently say that deliberate alterations were made in the text.
I believe that the Bezan Reviser made many skillful changes in passages relating to Asia Minor and some foolish changes in European passages. In some of these cases, the view remains open that the Bezan reading is the original; but evidence is as yet not sufficient to give certainty. The home of the Revision is along the line of intercourse between Syrian Antioch and Ephesus, for the life of the early Church lay in intercommunication, but the Reviser was connected with Antioch, for he inserts “we” in XI 28. Dr. Chase emphasizes this point.
Note. τὸν πρῶτον λόγον. The commentators universally regard this as an example of the misuse of πρῶτος; but they give no sufficient proof that Luke elsewhere misused that word. In Stephen’s speech (VII 12) the adverb πρῶτον misused for πρότερον occurs, but a dispassionate consideration of the speeches in Acts must convince every reader that they are not composed by the author, but taken verbatim from other authorities (in this case from Philip at Cæsareia, XXI 8). Blass, p. 16, points out with his usual power, that the character and distinction of the comparative and superlative degrees was decaying in the Greek of the N.T., and that in many adjectives one of the two degrees played the part of both. But such changes do not affect all words simultaneously; and the distinction between πρότερος and πρῶτος might be expected to last longer than that between most other pairs. We observe that Paul uses both, and
The Acts of the Apostles CHAP. I
distinguishes them correctly (though he blurs the distinction in other words): τὸ πρότερον as the former of two visits Gal. IV 13, τὴν προτέραν ἀναστροθήν Eph. IV 22. Blass, with the grammarian’s love for making absolute rules, conjectures the last example away, in order to lay down the law that the adjective πρότερος is not employed in N.T.; but we follow the MSS., and find in them the proof that the distinction was only in process of decay, and that the pair πρότερος