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The Authorship of the “We” Sections of the Book of Acts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
How alluring and yet how elusive is the personality of the self-effacing Diarist of the Acts! Modest to the last degree and yet dignified in his quiet assurance that he is an integral part of the most significant spiritual fellowship of his day, a hero worshiper, lost in admiration for his leader and yet singularly correct in his identification of really great events, and always unwaveringly convinced that he is observing and recording consequential affairs, he nobly deserves his place in the comradeship of the Book. The more, therefore, should we like to draw this quiet workman out of his namelessness, and set him in his true place as pioneer of those historians of the clearer insight to whom the expanding church of Jesus Christ has seemed the central fact of the world's life. Can we do him this right? I venture to hope that it may yet be possible.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1920
References
1 The linguistic facts clearly support the suggestion here made. “From Epaphroditus” exactly duplicates the preposition of “from you.” It is the παρά of source which is used in each case and not the διά of agent. Regarding the distinction Paul is extremely careful. Romans 1 5 presents an exact parallel, where agency is intended. See also Gal. 1 1, 12.
2 Strangely enough, the only other place where the accurate translation is thus abandoned by the Revisers is in the reference (II Cor. 8 23) to the other members of the same deputation. Not realizing that they are such, and that they have already thus been appointed not only to carry the collection but also to promote it, and failing also, as I think, to realize how large the whole project bulked in Paul's mind, they have here also softened the word into “messenger,” thus throwing confusion into the whole Pauline use of the word. The identification of all these members of the group as in Paul's mind entitled to the name “apostle,” helps most significantly to clarify for us the whole Pauline conception of this office, regarding which he is so deeply concerned (I Cor. 9 1, etc.).