American trustees of the John Bohlen Lectureship, who invited Dr.
Howson to deliver the lecture, very probably requested him to make his lecture one addressed rather to the general public than to students ; and in any case, it is clear that such popular lectures should be delivered from time to time under trusts like those of the Bampton Lectures ; and the John Bohlen Lectureship was founded in order to extend to the United States such advantages, whatever they may be, as the testator of the Bampton trust- fund believed himself to be conferring upon England. But popular in their form as Dean Howson's lectures are, they are full of valuable matter, and contain many criticisms which will be new and interesting not only to laymen, but to careful students of The Acts of the Apostles.
The very great evidential importance of this book, from the point of view of the critic, is this :—There can be no substantial doubt that it was written after the Gospel of Luke, to which the writer, in his preface, expressly refers as compiled before this later history. Again, there can be no doubt at all that Luke's is the latest of the three Synoptic Gospels ; indeed, this is just what the most negative critics of the Gospels are most eager to maintain. Well, then, granted these assumptions, the date of The Acts of the Apostles, if we have any means of fixing it, must give us a limit considerably beyond that of the composition of St. Mark and St. Matthew, and beyond that of the date of St. Luke itself. Everything, therefore, which bears on the date of The Acts of the Apostles is of extreme im- portance, in throwing back the date of the Gospels themselves to a period very much nearer the death of our Lord than that of the compilation of this narrative. Of course, the most important source of the argument for the strictly historical character of the Book of Acts is to be found in Paley's remarkable Horae Paulinae, and the proof he there furnishes of minute and unin- tentional coincidence between the undisputed Epistles of St.
Paul and the external narrative of his journeys given in this book.
No such external account could have been written long after the event which would have corresponded in this minute way with the mere hints and parentheses of the letters ; and this clear correspondence is alone sufficient to place the authorship of the Pauline part of the Book of Acts at a date certainly not very many months after the close of the book with St. Paul's arrival at Rome. Assign it to any date much beyond this, and it becomes impossible to understand how a narrative of events long ago passed could have been so accurate and coherent as to supply the explanation of so many far from conspicuous implications in the authentic letters. But many people have supposed that
The Acts embody some contemporary journal of St. Paul's travelling companion,—a document distinguishable by the use of the first person from the rest of the book,—and that the part which does not rest on this supposed early docu- ment, may be very much later in its origin than the -rest.
It is for the purpose of testing. this last supposition that Dean Howson's popular little book seems to us so valuable. He shows, we think, that even in that portion of the Book of Acts which concerns St. Peter, there is the same sort of undesigned evidence of internal truthfulness and accuracy, which Paley derived for the Pauline part from the latent coincidences between the Epistles and The Acts. We do not mean, of course, that there is the same room for veri- fication in the latter case as there is in the former. We have no Epistles with which to compare the Petrine portion of The Acts, and can only submit the various parts of the nar- rative itself to the same kind of minute comparison. But when the same events are twice or thrice narrated under different cir- cumstances, we can note carefully what is omitted in each, what is added in each, and what is common to the two or three
• The Evidential Value of the Acts of the Apostles. By the Very Rev. J. B. Howson, D.D., Dean of Cheater. Delivered in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, in April, 1880. London : W. Isbister and Co.
narratives, and form a very good. opinion as to the sim- plicity, accuracy, and naturalness of the varied form of the narrative in each case, and as to the probability that these variations are or are not due to the artistic purpose of an imaginative writer, who was freely modifying his own materials to make his story read well. Dean Howson, for example, takes the double version, first, by the author of The Acts, and next by St. Peter himself, of the reception of Cornelius the centurion into the Christian Church, and subjects both to a careful analysis. The passage is much longer than we should generally care to extract, but we could not do justice to this interesting little book without a somewhat lengthened specimen of its argument There are two accounts of the conversion of Cornelius, one given by St. Luke in the direct narrative of the tenth chapter, the other by St. Peter, when defending himself before the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, as recorded in the eleventh. I suppose the general impression of most readers as to this reiteration would be this, that the occasion being very important, it is intentionally made emphatic in this way. And to this view I should see no objection, if we had simply a case of reiteration before us. The Bishop of Lincoln devoutly says here that the Holy Spirit, in the structure of Scripture, does not disdain to use repetition ; Reuss says that we have hero a specimen of the Oriental style of narration ; and neither of these opinions need be blamed, nor are they inconsistent with one another. But, as I have implied, we have in this place not to deal with a case of mere reiteration. On the second occasion, when the conversion of Cornelius is related, St. Peter is speaking under apologetic con- ditions. He addresses himself, therefore, to the emergency, as any sensible man would do, speaking at such a moment under a serious sense of responsibility. The expostulation was—' Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.' His task (and it was a difficult one) was to convince those who, under deep-rooted prejudice, so expostulated. Hence be omits certain things which appear in St. Luke's narrative, but which are of no moment to his argument. Certain points again in that narrative he repeats with care, and lays special stress upon them. Certain other things he adds ; and we should-not have known them at all, were it not that St. Peter was called upon thns to justify and defend himself before his fellow-apostles and others. Let us look at his speech ender these three heads. He does not say that when the vision came to him he was on the housetop, or that it was midday, or that he was hungry, or that they were preparing his meal when the sheet descended, or that he came down' from the roof to meet the messengers. All these things, though most interesting in the narrative, and indeed important for the natural telling of the story, were of no argumenta- tive value in the serious effort of the moment. Again, he does not say anything about that animated part of the story in which the mes- sengers are described as inquiring their way to the house of Simon the tanner.' All such particulars were outside his own experience; and it would have been unreal, perhaps suspicions, to have named them. But, again, he does not say that Cornelius was a centurion. He calls him simply 'the man' at Caesarea. The fact that he was a Roman soldier would not predispose any Jew to regard him with complacency. Nor does Peter describe the admirable character of Cornelius, which is made so prominent in the direct narrative. For the exercise of moral persuasion upon him at Toppa, in reference to the extraordinary summons he was receiving to go to Caesarea, this description was of high importance. One of the lessons he was to learn was that God's distinctions between one man and another rest on moral grounds, and that it is possible for a heathen to be drawn by the grace of God towards the highest good without any Judaism intervening. But such a view presented abruptly to the apostles and elders' at that moment might have created a prejudice in their minds, and made them reluctant to listen. They were not disposed as yet to think that any high virtues could exist irrespective of Judaic conditions. But on certain things named by the direct his- torian St. Peter does lay special stress, knowing that they will tell upon the conviction of his hearers. Thus he says that he was praying when the vision came. Whatever lingering prejudice there might have been in the minds of the Apostles, they knew what their Lord had said concerning prayer and the answer to prayer. Again, Peter noted strongly the remarkable coincidence as to time and circum- stance in this wonderful experience ; and they had the fullest belief (and they would have had the fullest belief even if they had not heard the Sermon on the Mount) in the minute guiding of Special Providence. Again, he laid emphatic stress on the voice of the Holy Ghost, which since the day of Pentecost, in fulfilment of the promise, had become to them an articulate voice. Once more, though he does not disturb the minds of his hearers by speaking of the character of Cornelius, he does tell them expressly that an angel' had appeared to him. This fact brought the occurrences in his house within the range of those recognised divine communications, of which they had had familiar instances in the history of the Old Testament. And still once again, though he does not give unimportant details of place and person (does not say, for instance, that he was lodging in the house of Simon the tanner'), he does specify most strongly the personal form of the message which came from Calserea. Simon, which is sur- named Peter'—four times in this whole narrative of the conversion of Cornelius does this significant phrase occur. They well knew that the Lord had given to him this surname. The reiteration, too (for here is reiteration), made the surname very definite to their minds, as it had been made to his. Moreover, it expressed his strong per- sonal conviction that he had received a call to a special mission,. so that, to quote words used by himself long afterwards, the Gentiles ' by his mouth' were first to hear directly of Christ. All these things touched them very closely, and must have gathered gradually into an
irresistible argument. And now, in the third place, let me point out certain things which Peter, while telling his own story. added to the circumstances related by St. Luke. He says that the voice came to him from Heaven.' He says that the sheet gradually approached to him and came near to him. He says that he looked upon its contents intently and gazed deliberately. All this is part of the natural vividness with which a man gives the account of what has happened to himself. But, moreover, it tended to show to his hearers that the teaching which came to him through this vision was no mere vague impression, but a very de- liberate conviction, seriously accepted. And finally, mark how he calls attention to the witnesses and the companions of his journey to Caesarea. 'Moreover, these sir brethren accompanied me.' But for this pointed and lively reference in his speech we should not have known that there were 'six.' Nor should we have known from what is related in the direct narrative that he took these six men with him to Jerusalem (in itself a most important and convincing fact), to attest the truth of this great transaction. Above all, when he comes to speak of the descent of the Holy Ghost at Ctesarea, he describes the process of his own mind. Then remembered I the word of the Lord.' They, too, had heard the same word of the Lord. I shall have occasion to refer to this point again in the next lecture, as an illus- tration of the connection between the Acts and the Gospels. Here, I adduce it only as an indication of natural truthfulness."
May it not be added to this, that in only one out of the four dis- tinct versions of the story of what the angel said to Cornelius, —namely, the account of St. Luke, the account of the mes- sengers of Cornelius to St. Peter, the account of Cornelius him- self to St. Peter, and the account of St. Peter at Jerusalem,— the only one in which it is expressly stated that St. Peter's message to Cornelius would contain " salvation for Cornelius and all his household," is the one given by St. Peter himself in his defence of himself at Jerusalem, in the presence, however, of the " six brethren " whom he had taken with him P In one of the other versions, Cornelius is told that he is to hear certain words of St. Peter's, presumably in answer to his prayers, but in all the three first versions no indication of the drift of what St. Peter is to say is given at all, while in the fourth St. Peter expressly attributes to the angel a prediction that his message will contain for Cornelius and his household the words of salva- tion. That seems to us at once true to the life and quite un- designed, true to the life because this is the only version of the angel's message which is immediately followed by the testimony that the Holy Spirit was given to Cornelius and his household after St. Peter's address to them, and because the connection between the promise and the result would be sure to impress St. Peter's jealous audience. At the same time, this must have been undesigned, since a writer for effect would hardly have ventured to embody in the last of four accounts of a message, words omitted from all the three first, and apparently, there- fore, adding something fresh to the story. Nevertheless, that Peter and his six companions must have heard a minuter account of the vision of Cornelius during their stay of some days at Caesarea than any given before, is probable in itself ; though it is very unlike the caution of an artificially constructed, or the uncertainty of a vaguely remembered story, to make the last of four versions given of it, and all given within a page or two of each other, the most minute. And yet that it was likely to have been the most minute in this respect, since it was the only one in which the fulfilment of the prediction was con- tained, and the only one in which the fulfilment of the predic- tion was of considerable value for the purposes of the narrator, is also clear.
Dean Howson deals in the same manner with the various versions of the account of St. Paul's conversion, and with equally good effect, showing, as we think, that what is added to the story in St. Paul's apologetic account of it to the Jews, is just what would be recounted for such a purpose, and what might well have been omitted, as comparatively immaterial, for the purposes of the other versions of the narrative. These two cases are but specimens of the criticisms of these lectures. Let us add that Dean Howson's remarks on the obvious but inci- dental reminiscences of the Galilean life and ministry of Christ in the speeches of St. Peter, are amongst the best passages in this volume. This little work will be, we think, as useful as it is popular, adding a good deal, as it does, to Paley's remarkable argument for the early origin of The Acts, and for the authen- ticity of its historical character.
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