interruptions, at least twelve years. He was again with Paul in his last captivity, shortly before his
martyrdom, his most faithful and devoted companion (2 Tim. 4:11).
Time of Composition.
Luke probably began the book of Acts or a preliminary diary during his missionary journeys
with Paul in Greece, especially in Philippi, where he seems to have tarried several years; he continued
it in Caesarea, where he had the best opportunity to gather reliable information of the earlier history,
from Jerusalem, and such living witnesses as Cornelius and his friends, from Philip and his daughters,
who resided in Caesarea; and he finished it soon after Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, before
the terrible persecution in the summer of 64, which he could hardly have left unnoticed.
We look in vain for any allusion to this persecution and the martyrdom of Paul or Peter, or
to any of their Epistles, or to the destruction of Jerusalem, or to the later organization of the church,
or the superiority of the bishop over the presbyter (Comp. Acts 20:17, 28), or the Gnostic heresies,
except by way of prophetic warning (20:30). This silence in a historical work like this seems
inexplicable on the assumption that the book was written aftera.d. 70, or even after 64. But if we
place the composition before, the martyrdom of Paul, then the last verse is after all an appropriate
conclusion of a missionary history of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. For the bold and free
testimony of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the very heart of the civilized world was the sign and
pledge of victory.
The Acts and the Gospels.
The Acts is the connecting link between the Gospels and Epistles. It presupposes and
confirms the leading events in the life of Christ, on which the church is built. The fact of the
resurrection, whereof the apostles were witnesses, sends a thrill of joy and an air of victory through
the whole book. God raised Jesus from the dead and mightily proclaimed him to be the Messiah,
the prince of life and a Saviour in Israel; this is the burden of the sermons of Peter, who shortly
before had denied his Master. He boldly bears witness to it before the people, in his pentecostal
sermon, before the Sanhedrin, and before Cornelius. Paul likewise, in his addresses at Antioch in
Pisidia, at Thessalonica, on the Areopagus before the Athenian philosophers, and at Caesarea before
Festus and Agrippa, emphasizes the resurrection without which his own conversion never could
have taken place.
The Acts and the Epistles.
The Acts gives us the external history of the apostolic church; the Epistles present the
internal life of the same. Both mutually supplement and confirm each other by a series of
coincidences in all essential points. These coincidences are all the more conclusive as they are
undesigned and accompanied by slight discrepancies in minor details. Archdeacon Paley made
them the subject of a discussion in his Horae Paulinae,^1099 which will retain its place among classical
monographs alongside of James Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Arguments such as are
furnished in these two books are sufficient to silence most of the critical objections against the
credibility of Acts for readers of sound common sense and unbiased judgment. There is not the
slightest trace that Luke had read any of the thirteen Epistles of Paul, nor that Paul had read a line
of Acts. The writings were contemporaneous and independent, yet animated by the same spirit.
Luke omits, it is true, Paul’s journey to Arabia, his collision with Peter at Antioch, and many of(^1099) First published in 1790, and often since. See also the list of parallel passages in Dr. Plumptre’s Com. on Acts, pp. x. and
xi.
A.D. 1-100.