208 SIR W. M. RAMSAY, ON EXPLORATION OF ASIA MINOR, AS BEARING 



should find abundant reason to conclude that the book on Lul<:e 

 ihe Physician, attributed to Professor Harnack by universal 

 consent, is really the work of at least two writers, and that their 

 works have been wrongly united into a single composite work 

 by a later author, who took parts out of the two older writers, 

 and combined them regardless of the hopeless and glaring 

 disagreement between them. But I am not a " Higher Critic," 

 merely a common-place historian, whose only aim is to establish 

 facts, and to state the judgment that inevitably and simply 

 springs from the facts. The contrast between facts and 

 judgments in Harnack's recent work is not due to the combina- 

 tion of two authorities into one book ; but to the firm resolve 

 'Qi the author to reject much of Luke's work as incredible, and 

 to the necessity of preparing the way for this rejection by 

 binding fault with the culprit. 



Let us take one example of the inconsistency between the 

 opinions of Harnack and the admitted facts. He admits, as the 

 facts to start from, that Luke entered into Paul's circle, when 

 Paul had been, and doubtless still was, publishing the Apostolic 

 Decree of the Council of Jerusalem to all his Churches as their 

 rule of conduct. Luke quotes this Decree verbatim, and tells us 

 -all about how it was passed and what use Paul made of it. Such 

 are the facts admitted by Harnack ; but his conclusion is that 

 tlie Decree was a free invention of Luke's — mark you, not an 

 improved version of the sense, with slight verbal changes in the 

 Greek, but a pure and absolute fiction, in which Luke conveyed 

 his own ideas as to what ought to have been done. 



But now to return from this digression. I have set before you 

 the attitude about Luke's historical credibility taken at the 

 ])resent day, not indeed by all scholars, probably not even by 

 the majority, but still by a considerable number of good 

 scholars. I have asked you to contrast this present-day 

 attitude with tliat which was characteristic of the period about 

 twenty years ago, when no one seemed willing to say a good 

 word for this great and outstanding historian. Wliat is the 

 reason for this remarkable change, the most marked change that 

 lias occurred in respect of any book and any writer in the 

 \vhole range of the Bible ? 



The reason originated in this, that people began to observe 

 and study minutely tlie country about which tlie second part 

 ♦of Acts mainly treats, and in which the evolution of Christian 

 liistory had its centre and chief seat in the period that followed 

 after the middle of the first century : viz., Asia Minor. It 

 ijccamc clciir, and now stands out beyond the reach of denial 



