world, and thinking people are wondering where new sanctions are to be found for the re-establishment of an ordered society. It may be taken for granted that any reconstruction of the Protestant view of Christianity must rest upon a thorough examination of the documents of the Faith. Assuming that Christianity has not been a failure, but also that it does not hold the sway over the will and purpose of Western civilization that might be expected after nearly two millennia of its existence, two questions arise: first, whether by its nature and profession the Founder and His followers can be interpreted as having preached a gospel of Progress such as would be accepted by the world as a token of success; and, secondly, whether a more patient and sincere investigation of the sources which contain the earliest accounts of our Faith will not release a purer flow of loyalty to the Gospel. To the first question an answer will not be attempted in the present article. The second is the inspiring belief of most scholars of the New Testament. There is of course a purely scientific spirit which has no concern beyond the desire to discover the origines as they actually were, but religion is of such paramount importance to man that few scholars in this branch are so coldly objective. Yet a book is always regarded with some suspicion which when treating of an historical subject exhibits a tendency to edification. But the finest scholarship is that which does justice to the persons and genius of a movement or its literature.

Half a century ago the most prominent names in New Testament criticism on the Continent were Strauss, Baur and Renan; and in England the book called Supernatural Religion attracted popular attention. In Britain the attack on the historicity of the Gospels and the Acts called forth the work of Lightfoot and of Hort, the latter a very great scholar who has perhaps not received his meed of recognition partly because of his condensed style. These were followed by Sanday, who possessed a singularly judicial mind. Another scholar of high promise was J. H. Moulton, who fell a victim to the submarine warfare. In Scotland A. B. Bruce was a pioneer, and Denney won a commanding position both by his personality and his progressive scholarship. The only living

scholar to be mentioned is Sir William Ramsay, the archaeologist and traveller in Asia Minor. New Testament investigation is being vigorously carried forward by a host of competent persons in Britain and America whose contributions are fully abreast of what is being done on the Continent. Science is international. Men's labours are subjected to severe scrutiny from every quarter. The glamour of names is gone. Radical opinion as such is of little account, and whatever dominance Germany may have exercised for a time has been taken from her by her downfall. Hereafter the work of her scholars will be sifted by those of other countries as dispassionately as that of their nearest neighbours, and their judgement will be discounted more than it was before the war.

About two years ago there appeared the first volume of a work planned by Dr. Foakes Jackson and Dr. Kirsopp Lake, the general purpose of which is 'the study and, so far as possible, the explanation of the Beginnings of Christianity'. It dealt with the general subjects which constituted the backgrounds of the period in the Jewish and Hellenistic worlds. This serious undertaking by two such scholars was received with respect, and the volume was recognized as affording a survey in reasonable compass for English readers of the results of recent scholarship, similar to what was done nearly twenty years ago for German readers by P. Wendland in his Römisch-Hellenistische Kultur, and in 1921 by Eduard Meyer of Berlin, the historian of antiquity, who has published the first two volumes of a very significant and independent work, called Ursprung und Anfänge des Christenthums. A comparison of this volume with Introductions to the Apostolic Age of a generation past shows what a flood of light has during the interval been thrown upon the Hellenistic Age. Discoveries through travel, the decipherment of inscriptions, the unearthing of papyri, and a more thorough investigation of historical material have made it necessary to revise opinions on the language, the religious and philosophic ideas and even the government of the Empire. Much remains to be done, but the field is very fruitful.

The second volume as described at the head of this article has just appeared, and it need hardly be said that it is a

product of first class scholarship and of thorough scientific method. Associated with the editors are several eminent scholars who treat of special subjects. Valuable though these discussions are, they leave the impression of being articles in a composite work, and what one would desiderate is a single treatment of the whole unified by the editors into an impressive treatise.

The opening chapter is devoted to the Greek and the Jewish traditions in writing history. Historical accuracy was seldom aimed at by the Greeks, the material was re-cast, and speeches freely composed in the interest of rhetorical form. "The prefaces and dedications of Luke at once suggest classification with the contemporary Hellenistic historians'. The Jewish ideal is 'to give teaching and law rather than accurate and full narration of events.' A Greek writer would invent speeches but would pay more respect to facts. One of the problems to consider is how far Luke was influenced by Greek and how far by Jewish methods.

Passing over, for the present, the next two chapters I shall turn to a characteristically suggestive discussion by Professor F. C. Burkitt on "The Use of Mark in the Gospel according to Luke', the purpose of which is to deduce from Luke's treatment of his source in Mark his general method as a guide to the structure and character of Acts. He chooses the visit of Jesus to Jerusalem, Luke xix-xxi, where the author 'seems to have had little beyond the narrative of Mark x, 32xiii' and he finds that 'he has treated his source not only with freedom and skill, but also with intelligence and substantial fairness.. What concerns us is not that Luke has changed so much but that he has invented so little. It may indicate that the same has happened with some of the speeches in Acts'. 'Luke is not inventing, but simply retelling, without essential change, tales that are to a large extent founded on the reminiscences of those who had heard the Master'. 'One clear result is a demonstration of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of "getting behind" Luke by a more close consideration of what he chooses to tell us'. A comparison with the Gospel leads Burkitt to believe that the general story of Acts may be accepted with some confidence as a substantially

historical account of the early days of Christianity, but that we cannot reconstruct the sources used.'

In a chapter on "The Use of the Greek Language in Acts' Professor de Zwaan deals ably with the Koiné, including a discussion on 'Semitisms', and he finds a greater influence from the LXX than some recent grammarians do. But he is emphatic in his rejection of the thesis of Hobart, so vividly championed by Harnack, that the vocabulary of Luke shows marked traces of 'medical' language, which was a support to the tradition that the author of Acts was a physician. In this he has the strong agreement of Professor Cadbury and others in this volume as well as the editors.

Mr. W. K. L. Clarke finds that though Luke's vocabulary is richer than that of the other evangelists, the influence of the LXX is evident in the number of rare words that they possess in common, as well as in the list of characteristic words and phrases of Acts that are found in the LXX. He also finds that the LXX has been an important factor in the composition of some of the speeches of Acts, but that its influence in moulding the narrative has been slight except in chapters viii-xii. As regards the vocabulary of Luke and Josephus 'the number of peculiarly Lucan words absent from the LXX but found in Josephus comes about equal to those which are in the LXX but are absent from Josephus.'

The editors themselves discuss the 'Internal Evidence of Acts'. 'Although there is a primâ facie probability for the use of written sources in Acts, and especially for Aramaic sources in the earlier chapters, the writer wrote too well to allow us to distinguish with certainty either the boundaries of his sources or the extent of his own editorial work'. In the first half of Acts, especially in the early chapters, in the speech of Stephen, and in chapters xi and xv they trace doublets, which may be due to the use of Galilean, Jerusalem and Antioch sources. Galatians on the one hand, and Paul's action in Corinth in regard to eidwλólvra on the other, seem to them to rule out the identification of the visit of Paul to Jerusalem which he recounts in Galatians ii with those in Acts xi or xv. Their own solutions are not held confidently, and present new problems. The strata of Acts are not nearly

so obvious as those of the Pentateuch. The style of the second part of Acts, though obviously different from that of the first, pervades the whole book and if due, as they suppose, to an editor it approximates more closely to that of the 'diarist' in the 'We' sources than to the sources in the opening chapters or to the Gospel of Mark. Assuming, again very tentatively, that the name of the Diarist was Luke, the portion of Acts which narrates his travels with Paul was the only part to be attributed to him, though they do not exclude the possibility that 'the final editor may have been a companion of Paul at times, but if so he did not have a good understanding of the mind of Paul as shown in the epistles'. In fact 'the main reason for ever deserting the opinion of the editor is not subjective criticism of Acts, but the definite statements of Mark and Paul.' 'Beyond doubt Luke and Acts give a connected and intelligible account of the events which intervened between the arrest of Jesus and the growth of Hellenistic Christianity. If we had not other documents we should have no power and little reason to go behind it'.

Pure history was not the aim of the author, but an apology for Christianity to the heathen especially in view of suspicions of the official world, and also the production of a manual of instruction for the Christian. "The writer desires Theophilus to understand the claim of the Church to be the true Israel, and consequently that its worship was lawful in the Roman empire'; also 'that the Church was harmless, had always been found so, and could not justly be punished'.

The didactic purpose of Acts emphasizes the idea that 'the whole of the Old Testament foretells the Christian Church and belongs to it... the Gospel and Acts would appear to the Gentile as one continuous plea for belief in the God of Israel'. 'Jesus was the living Head of the Christian church . . . and he becomes Lord, which was a long step in the direction of deification and consequent worship'. The Church is something new in history and is in Acts identical with the Kingdom of God. 'Christians were inspired by the Spirit owing to their membership in the Ecclesia and its connexion with the Lord Jesus'. "The Christian is not a man who is always and entirely possessed by the Spirit, but is one who is capable of obsession,