128 A C T A C T blame in this matter, and that St Paul s opinions were peculiarly calculated to stir up persecution against the Christians. The stories in the Acts were devised to con vince them that they were mistaken in this supposition. On every occasion in which St Paul is accused before magistrates, and especially Roman magistrates, he is ac quitted. Gallic, the town-clerk of Ephesus, Lysias, Felix, and Festus, all declare that St Paul has done nothing con trary to the law. And while the Romans thus free him from all blame, it is the Jews who are always accusing him. We have here reproduced the argument of Zeller, who has given the most thorough exposition of an opinion held also by Baur, Schwegler, and others. The argument fails to have effect if the assumption that St Paul and St Peter differed radically is rejected. It also suffers from the cir cumstance, that there is no historical authentication of the church being in such a state in the first half of the second century, that this attempt at reconciliation could take place within it. Moreover, the writing of a fictitious production seems an extraordinary means for any one to employ in order to effect reconciliation, especially if, as Zeller imagines, the church in Rome was specially con templated. The church in Rome and the other Christian churches had St Paul s Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians before them. They could be in no doubt as to what were his sentiments. They must also have had some history of his career ; and no object could be effected by attempting to palm upon them a decree of apostles which never existed, or a history of St Peter and St Paul contradicted by what they knew of both. Overbeck, finding this solution of Zeller unsatisfactory, thinks that the object of the Acts is to help the Gentile- Christian Church of the first half of the second century, now far removed from Paulinism and strongly influenced by Judaism, to form a clear idea of its own past, especially of its own origin and of its founder St Paul. It is thus, he maintains, an historical novel, somewhat like the Clemen tines, devised to realise the state of the church at an earlier period. It would be tedious to enumerate all the other objects which have been set forth as the special aim of the Acts. Some think that it was a work written for the private use of Theophilus, and aimed, therefore, at giving him, the special information which he required. Others think that it is intended to describe the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. Others believe that the writer wished to defend the character of the Apostle Paul. Some of the more recent members of the Tubingen school think that it was intended to distort the character of St Paul, and that the image of him given in the Acts is an intermediate stage between the real Paul and the caricature supposed by them to be made of him under the name of Simon in the Clementines. Date. There are no sure data for determining the date. Appeal used to be made to Acts viii. 26, "Unto the way which goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is desert." But most probably it is the way which is here said to be desert or lonely. But even if the word " desert " or " lonely " be applied to Gaza, we get nothing out of it. Accordingly, in the absence of data very various dates have been assigned. Some think that it was written at the time mentioned in the last chapter of Acts, when St Paul had been two years in Rome. Some think that it must have been written after the fall of Jerusalem, as they believe that the gospel was written after that event. IrenaBus thought that it was written after the death of St Peter and St Paul (If. iii. 1). Others think that St Luke must have written it at a late period of his life, about the year 80 A.D. The Tubingen school think that it was writ ten some time in the second century, most of them agree ing on the second or third decade of that century, about 125 A.D. They argue that a late date is proved by the nature of the purpose which occasioned the work, by the representation which it gives of the relation of the Christians to the Roman state, and by the traces of Gnosticism (xx. 29), and of a hierarchical constitution of the church (i. 17, 20; viii. 14, ff. ; xv. 28; xx. 17, 28) to be found in the Acts. Place. There is no satisfactory evidence by which to settle the place of composition. Later fathers of the church and the subscriptions of late MSS. mention Achaia, Attica, Alexandria, Macedonia, and Rome. And these places have all had their supporters in modern times. Some have also tried to show that it was written in Asia Minor, probably at Ephesus. The most likely supposition is that it was written at Rome ; Zeller has argued with great plausibility for this conclusion. There is a large literature on the subject of this article, but the most important treatises are those of Schwanbeck, Schneckenburger, Lekebusch, Zeller, Trip, Klostermann, and (Ertel. Zeller s work deserves special praise for its thoroughness. Various other writers have discussed the sub ject in works dealing with this among others; as Baur in his Paulus ; Schwegler in his NachapostoliscliesZeitalter ; Ewaltl in his History of Israel ; Renau in his Apostles; Hausrath in his New Testament History; and, in a more conservative manner, Neander, Baumgarten, Lechler, Thiersch, and Lange. Of commentaries, the best on the Tubingen side s that of De Wette, remodelled by Overbeck, and that of the more conservative Meyer is especially good. In English we have an able treatment of the subject in Dr Davidson s Introduction to the Study of the New Testament; we have com mentaries by Biscoe, Humphry, Hackett, Cook, Words worth, Alford, and Gloag; and dissertations by Paley, Birks, Lendn, Conybeare, and Howson. There are various other treatises claiming to be Acts of Apostles. One or two of these must have existed at an early date, though, no doubt, they have since received large interpolations. But most of them belong to a late period, and all of them are acknowledged to be apocryphal. They are edited by Tischendorf in his Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Lipsiae, 1851), and have been translated, with an introduction giving information as to their origin and dates, by Mr Walker, in vol. xvi. of the Ante-Nicene Library. (j. D.) ACTA CONSISTORII, the edicts of the consistory or council of state of the Roman emperors. These edicts were generally expressed in such terms as these : " The august emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, in council declare, That the children of decurions shall not be exposed to wild beasts in the amphitheatre." The senate and soldiers often swore, either through flattery or on compulsion, upon the edicts of the emperor. The name of a senator was erased by Nero out of the register, because he refused to swear upon the edicts of Augustus. ACTA DIURNA, called also Acta Populi, Acta Publica, and simply Acta or Diurna, was a sort of Roman gazette, containing an authorised narrative of the transactions worthy of notice which happened at Rome as assemblies, edicts of the magistrates, trials, executions, buildings, births, marriages, deaths, accidents, prodigies, &c. Petronius has given us an imitation specimen of the Acta Diurna, one or two extracts from which may be made to show their style and contents. The book-keeper of Trimalchio pretends to read from the Acta Urlis: " On the 30th of July, on the Cuman farm, belonging to Trimalchio, were born 30 boys and 40 girls; there were brought into the barn from the threshing-floor 125,000 bushels of wheat; 500 oxen were broken in. On the same day the slave Mithridates
was crucified for having slandered the tutelar deity of our
