36 



KEV. CANON R. J. KNOWLING, D.D._, ON 



a good acquaintance with medical science and terminology may 

 be ascribed to " Luke." This is quite enough for Harnack's 

 purpose. One of a sceptical turn of mind might with reason 

 dispute that the autlior of the Acts was a practising physician. 

 If he, however, admits that this author possessed a good acquaint- 

 ance with medical science and terminology, then the unanimous 

 tradition that the author was Luke the physician receives 

 the strongest support ; for to what other Christian writer of the 

 first two centuries can we ascribe such ground of acquaintance ? 



It may be noted in passing that Dr. Zahn, no less than 

 Dr. Harnack, fully expresses his indebtedness to Dr. Hobart, and 

 we may well be glad that English scholarship has gained such a 

 notable recognition. We are often reminded by certain critics 

 of the debt which we owe to the Germans. But we may fairly 

 ask what do the Germans owe to us ? They no doubt may 

 point, for example, to many famous archaeologists, to many 

 famous investigators of the papyri and inscriptions, but we have 

 a Eamsay, a Milligan, a Moulton, a Kenyon. 



It may perhaps seem unnecessary to stop over this familiar 

 feature in St. Luke to which we have more specially referred, 

 but Dr. Harnack has thought it necessary to do so in the 

 fourth volume of his series no less than in the first. 



Not long ago the writer of this paper had occasion to examine 

 very closely the medical language of St. Luke, and it was a 

 great satisfaction to him to find that in a recent article in Tlie 

 Lancet, January 7th, 1911, the position taken up by Dr. Harnack 

 was unhesitatingly endorsed. 



One other point in connection with this use of medical 

 language is not without interest. It has been suggested that 

 St. Luke may well have acquired the power of shorthand writing 

 in connection with his training in medicine, and we know from 

 Galen that the students who attended his lectures were wont to 

 take them down. Pliny, too, tells us of the notarii, or shorthand 

 writers, who would write down rapidly from the dictation of 

 their masters. 



An additional interest may be fairly connected with this 

 subject. In the Studies in the Synoptic ProUeni recently 

 published by members of the University of Oxford, one of the 

 writers, Mr. Streeter, remarks that " the sayings preserved in 

 Q* were not taken down at the time by a shorthand 

 writer." But we have been well remindedf that shorthand 

 was employed by Cicero at the trial of Catiline, and great 



* Q stands for the German Quelle, a source. 



t tfihhert Journal, April 12th, 1912, p. 722, by Mr. St. George Stock. 



