ON TBE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 209 



from rational persons, that the book of Acts stands in the closest 

 relation with the geography and the situation of Asia Minor, in 

 t'ne first century. The book could not have been written in the 

 second century, as the later nineteenth-century scholars declared 

 it to be, because it is inconsistent with the situation of Asia Minor 

 in the second century ; it assumes conditions and relations that 

 ceased to exist before the date when it was declared to have been 

 fabricated, and must have passed out of the consciousness of 

 jnen ; it is a document that is stamped as of the first century 

 on the ordinary canons of criticism, and marked as originating 

 from contemporary record by its vividness and individuality. 



The detail that first caught my attention in this connection 

 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 fled from Iconium 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. Xow, Iconium was distinct 

 and separate from Lycaonia all through the Piomaii Imperial 

 time ; the frontier lay just a little south of Iconium and north 

 of Lystra during the first century; but in the early second 

 <2entury, Lystra became separated from Lycaonia and closely 

 connected witli Iconium, and it formed a part of the division of 

 the Empire to which Iconium belonged. There ceased, then, to 

 be a frontier between Iconium and Lystra ; and Acts xiv, 6, 

 could not have been written later. This slight point is one 

 involving much patient research, and recpiiring a decision on 

 many minute questions of historical and political geography, 

 which have slowly and gradually been solved one by one ; 

 hence this small detail, the first to arrest my attention when I 

 was beginning to study Luke as an autliority for the geography, 

 has only been solved in its full extent after many years of 

 careful examination. The first discussion which I ventured to 

 publish on this point was incomplete : it was not wrong in any 

 way, because it was confined to the statement of facts and the 

 drawing of the inevitable and undeniable inferences ; but there 

 was much more to say, which I cannot here state in full. 



This little point is typical. You. see how long a time, how 

 much labour, how many journeys, have been required before 

 we have attained sufficient knowledge of the condition of the 

 country in St. Paul's time to understand all that is implied in 

 this slight detail. It is the same with everything in the travel- 



