¹ Harnack's Beiträge exemplify both types. In their foundation they are markedly philological, but the philological results are applied to problems of the higher, or historical, criticism.

² The designation ‘Luke’ is applied to the compiler or author of Luke-Acts in accordance with tradition, and without prejudice to the question of the real authorship.

³ The boast of our modern Boaz, that when he is done reaping, Ruth's job will be fruitless, has much to justify it if restricted in application to his own self-limited field. His mistake lies in supposing that the world is dependent on the grain of that particular area. It is natural enough that the fanner (and for that matter the homesteader who staked out the field before him) should feel a certain jealousy of the grain dealer who, without participation in the toils of seedtime and harvest, buys up the produce of a thousand fields. If the grain collector be indeed ignorant of and unsympathetic with the producer's art, a certain measure of contempt may perhaps not unjustly mingle with this jealousy. The pretended higher critic who does not, in order to reach his own field, intelligently traverse the intervening regions of philological exegesis and textual criticism, is not worthy of the name he assumes, nor will his speculations stand the test of scholarship. Such a critic will share the fate of the ‘middleman’ who has no service of his own to contribute. The service rendered by others will speak for itself.

⁴ Like Colenso's Zulu interpreter, who pointed out to the bishop unobserved discrepancies in the Pentateuch, a second-century reviser of the text of Acts may have been more sensitive to difficulties of substance than a modern grammarian panoplied in a theory of translation Greek which postulates a flawless Aramaic original. An example may be found in the ‘Western’ additions to the story of the Fhilippian earthquake in Acts 16, 35 ff. The supposed Aramaic original having ceased at 15, S3 Torrey can see no further obstacles to the traditional view that a personal follower of Paul, present on occasion of the earthquake, wrote this account as an eye-witness less than fifteen years after. Those keenest to “keep their own tradition” regardless of consequences to “the word of God” are naturally gratified by a view which confirms their opinion of the reporter's name, even if his veracity should suffer. The ‘Western’ transcriber finds difficulties. He finds it hard to visualize a domesticated earthquake which plays around the heels of Paul and Silas, not affecting any save these favored individuals, leaves the household of the jailer undisturbed, and remains quite imperceptible to the rest of the population of Philippi. He therefore introduces a whole series of brief supplements to eliminate the improbabilities. The jailer “makes fast the other prisoners,” the magistrates “remember the earthquake,” and act accordingly, etc. To Torrey such difficulties are mere “fancy.”

⁵ For a similar prolepsis see Luke 3, 18–20.

⁶ How unusual it was may be judged by the perplexity of the original scribe of ϰ, who finding the four letters λλην of his exemplar illegible in the word Ἑλληνιστάς could make no better guess at the word than to substitute the six letters υαγγελ, to obtain εὐαγγελιστάς

⁷ Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, 3rd ed., I, pp. 462 f., cites three inscriptions from Mommsen (Ephemeris epigr. V, p. 249): “Coh. I Italica civium Romanorum voluntariorum” (C.I.L. XIV, 171); “Cohors miliaria Italica voluntariorum quae est in Syria” (C.I.L. XI, 6117); “Coh. II Italica” (C.I.L. VI, 8528). He also points to the interchange in Arrian (“Acies contra Alonas,” in Arriani Scripta Minora, ed. Hercher) of ἡ σπεῖρα ἡ Ἰταλική with οἱ Ἰταλοί as indicating (together with the inscription first cited) that a cohors Italica consisted of Roman citizens from Italy. However, the inscription on which dependence is placed for dating the arrival of this cohort in Syria before 69 A.D. is the epitaph of a soldier buried at Carnuntum on the Danube at that date, belonging to such a Cohors Italica II, and himself apparently a native of Philadelphia in Decapolis, a Roman colonia. This Roman citizen accordingly was also a “Syrian,” though it is reasonable to suppose that the traditions and temper of a cohort so named would be more like those of the legionaries whom the Jews of Caesarea had desired to bring thither than those of the “Syrian” auxiliaries whom they detested. The whole subject is obscure and difficult, but the judgement of impartial historians is likely to support Schürer rather than Ramsay in the interchange in The Expositor for September and December 1896, in which the bearing of the inscriptions on our problem is discussed. From the second of those above cited it appears that a Cohors Italica was stationed in Syria. From the Carnuntum inscription its arrival in Syria (where the recruit from Philadelphia probably enlisted) must be dated before 69. From its self-designation in the inscriptions and from the reference in Arrian we must infer that the character of the regiment and its officers would be such as the Jewish petitioners from Caesarea desired; and from the difference between the two references of Josephus in Ant. xix. 9, 2 and War lii. 13, 7 that its arrival there was after the death of Agrippa.

⁸ Another version, probably from the Second Source, appears in Lk. 11, 27 f.