164 KEY. P. P. FLOUEXOY, B.D., OX BEAPJXG OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL 



Similar correspondence with conditions revealed by archaeo- 

 logical and historical research may also be fonnd in the Epistles 

 and Eeyelation* ; but without going into particulars, we must 

 content ourselves with turning to the conclusions of one who 

 has very thoroughly examined these details, and is recognized 

 as a very high authority — probably the very highest authority, 

 on the geographical and historical setting of the writings of the 

 Xew Testament — the archaeologist and historian, Sir 1Vm. M. 

 Eamsay. 



(18) Lystra. — 



He says of the Acts — 



" The book could not have been written in the second century, 

 as the later nineteenth centmy scholars declared . . . because 

 it is inconsistent with the situation of Asia Minor in the second 

 century . , . It is stamped as a document of the first century 

 on the ordinary canons of criticism, and marked as originating from 

 contemporary records by its vividness and individuality." 



In this connection, Professor Eamsay tells us how, beginning 

 as a Higher Critic, under the guidance, as a student, of 

 Professor Eobertson Smith (who led out more than four thousand 

 men into a wilderness, which the most of them, alas, never 

 found their way out of), a comparatively unimportant fact 

 arrested his attention and caused a complete change of view — 



The detail that first caught my attention was a slight matter in 

 itself, but just the sort of small incidental, unimportant 

 circumstance by which date and knowledge or ignorance are tested. 

 In Acts xiv, 6, Paul and Barnabas are said to have fied to the cities 

 of Lycaonia, Lystra, and Derbe. Xo one could speak thus who did 

 not know that the boundary of Lycaonia was so drawn that, in 

 going from Iconium to Lystra, Paul crossed the frontier and 

 entered the district of Lycaonia." 



A change was made, however, early in the second century, 

 he tells us — 



"And Lystra became separated from Lycaonia and closely 

 connected with Iconium, and it formed a part of the division to 



infatuation ; but being citizens of Eome, I directed them to be carried 

 thither." — Pliny's Letters {to Trajan), vol. ii, pp. 249, 280. Editor.—" It 

 was one of the privileges of the Eoman citizen, secured by the Sempronian 

 law, that he could not be capitally convicted but by the suffrage of the 

 people, which seems to have been still so far in force as to make it 

 necessary to send the persons here mentioned to Eome." 



* See Professor Sir Wm. M. Ramsay's " Letters to the Seven Churches." 



