The following paper has no reference to the work entitled 'Supernatural Religion'; but, as it is kindred in subject and appeared in the same Review, I have given it a place here. DISCOVERIES ILLUSTRATING THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. IN [MAY, 1878.] N a former volume M. Renan declared his opinion that 'the author of the Third Gospel and the Acts was verily and indeed (bien réellement) Luke, a disciple of St Paul'.' In the last instalment of his work he condemns as untenable the view that the first person plural of the later chapters is derived from some earlier document inserted by the author, on the ground that these portions are identical in style with the rest of the work. Such an expression of opinion, proceeding from a not too conservative critic, is significant; and this view of the authorship, I cannot doubt, will be the final verdict of the future, as it has been the unbroken tradition of the past. But at a time when attacks on the genuineness of the work have been renewed, it may not be out of place to call attention to some illustrations of the narrative which recent discoveries have brought to light. No ancient work affords so many tests of veracity; for no other has such numerous points of contact in all directions with contemporary history, politics, and topography, whether Jewish or Greek or Roman. In the publications of the year 1877 Cyprus and Ephesus have made important contributions to the large mass of evidence already existing. 1. The government of the Roman provinces at this time. was peculiarly dangerous ground for the romance-writer to venture upon. When Augustus assumed the supreme power 2 Les Évangiles p. 436. 1 Les Apôtres p. xviii. he divided the provinces under the Roman dominion with the Senate. From that time forward there were two sets of provincial governors. The ruler of a senatorial province was styled a proconsul (ávúπaτos), while the officer to whom an imperatorial province was entrusted bore the name of proprætor (ávτiστράτηγος) or legate (πρεσβευτής). Thus the use of the terms 'proconsul' and 'proprætor' was changed; for, whereas in republican times they signified that the provincial governors bearing them had previously held the offices of consul and prætor respectively at home, they were now employed to distinguish the superior power under which the provinces were administered without regard to the previous rank of the governors administering them. Moreover, the original subdivision of the provinces between the Emperor and Senate underwent constant modifications. If disturbances broke out in a senatorial province and military rule was necessary to restore order, it would be transferred to the Emperor as the head of the army, and the Senate would receive an imperatorial province in exchange. Hence at any given time it would be impossible to say without contemporary, or at least very exact historical knowledge, whether a particular province was governed by a proconsul or a proprætor. The province of Achaia is a familiar illustration of this point. A very few years before St Paul's visit to Corinth, and some years later, Achaia was governed by a proprætor. Just at this time, however, it was in the hands of the Senate, and its ruler therefore was a proconsul, as represented by St Luke. Cyprus is a less familiar, but not less instructive, example of the same accuracy. Older critics, even when writing on the apologetic side, had charged St Luke with an incorrect use of terms; and the origin of their mistake is a significant comment on the perplexities in which a later forger would find himself entangled in dealing with these official designations. They fell upon a passage in Strabo1 where this writer, after mentioning the division of the provinces between the Emperor and the 1 xvii. p. 840. Senate, states that the Senate sent consuls to the two provinces of Asia and Africa but prætors to the rest on their list,— among which he mentions Cyprus; and they jumped at the conclusion-very natural in itself-that the governor of Cyprus would be called a proprætor. Accordingly Baronio1 suggested that Cyprus, though a prætorian province, was often handed over honoris causa to be administered by the proconsul of Cilicia, and he assumed therefore that Sergius Paulus held this latter office; while Grotius found a solution in the hypothesis that proconsul was a title bestowed by flatterers on an official whose proper designation was proprætor. The error illustrates the danger of a little learning, not the less dangerous when it is in the hands of really learned men. Asia and Africa, the two great prizes of the profession, exhausted the normal two consuls of the preceding year; and the Senate therefore were obliged to send ex-prætors and other magistrates to govern the remaining provinces under their jurisdiction. But it is now an unquestioned and unquestionable fact that all the provincial governors who represented the Senate in imperial times, whatever magistracy they might have held previously, were styled officially proconsuls2. The circumstances indeed, so far as regards Cyprus, are distinctly stated by Dion Cassius. At the original distribution of the provinces (B.C. 27) this island had fallen to the Emperor's share; but the historian, while describing the assignment of the several countries in the first instance, adds that the Emperor subsequently gave back Cyprus and Gallia Narbonensis to the Senate, himself taking Dalmatia in exchange3; and at a later point, when he arrives at the time in question (B.C. 22), he repeats the information respecting the transfer. 'And so,' he adds, 'proconsuls began to be sent to those nations 1 Sub ann. 46. 2 See Becker u. Marquardt Röm. Alterth. III. i. p. 294 sq. Even De Wette has not escaped the pitfall, for he states that according to Strabo Cyprus was governed by proprætors,' and he therefore supposes that Strabo and Dion Cassius are at variance. De Wette's error stands uncorrected by his editor, Overbeck. 3 Dion Cassius liii. 12. |