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ACTS.--"And certain men which came down from Judæa, taught the brethren saying,
Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When
therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them,
they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up
to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question" (Acts 15: 1, 2).
EPISTLE.--"That no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for,
The just shall live by faith" (Gal. 3: 11).
"Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by
the law" (Gal. 5: 4).
ACTS.--"And by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could
not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13: 39).
The epistle to the Galatians abounds with links that associate its teaching with the
Acts. We have not forgotten the problems that await us in the parallel passages Acts 15:
and Gal. 2:, but that they are parallel, if not identical, calls for no further proof.
I Thessalonians and the Acts.
EPISTLE.--"Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus" (I Thess. 1: 1).
ACTS.--"At midnight Paul and Silas prayed . . . . . they came to Thessalonica"
(Acts 16: 25 and 17: 1).
EPISTLE.--"For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in
vain; but even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated
as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of
God with much contention" (I Thess. 2: 1, 2).
ACTS.--"And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison,
charging the jailor to keep them safely" (Acts 16: 23).
EPISTLE.--"For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should
suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know" (I Thess. 3: 4).
ACTS.--"The Jews . . . . . set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason
. . . . . crying, these that have turned the world upside down, are come hither
also" (Acts 17: 5, 6).
There are other allusions to the Acts, in I Thessalonians 2: and 3:, but the above are
sufficient for our purpose. As with II Corinthians so with II Thessalonians, to establish
the relationship of the first epistle establishes also the relation of the second. For our
present purpose we are not concerned to prove the association of Hebrews with the Acts,
because that epistle lies outside Paul's ministry to the Gentiles, and no good purpose will
be served by merely multiplying evidence.
Following the apostle's example where he sometimes uses the objections of an
imaginary opponent, we remind ourselves of the fact that there is no evidence to prove
that the title "The Acts of the Apostles" is inspired. This is true, and although we have
used it to emphasize the fact that there could be no book until the "acts" recorded therein
were finished, and that, for instance, the epistle written to the Corinthians was most
certainly as important an "act" of Paul as those recorded in chapter 18: of the Acts,
our argument is in no wise impaired should this narrative be called by any other name.
The writer himself compares it with a "former treatise" in which he had recorded "all that