This would also account for the great prominence given to the events of the immediately preceding years in Chapters 20. to 28., which is quite unintelligible, unless the book was written soon afterwards. They were nothing like as important as the events of the next few years, about which the writer says nothing. And why should he go through the earlier stages of St. Paul's arrest and trial, so carefully, step by step, from Lysias to Felix, from Felix to Festus, and then to Agrippa, and on to Rome; and then when he comes to the crisis, and the Apostle is about to appear before Cæsar, suddenly break off, without giving a hint as to which way it was decided? Everyone must feel how tantalising it is; and how unlikely he is to have stopped here, if he could have gone on.
This abrupt ending, then, is the great argument for dating the book about A.D. 60; but it is supported by several others. In the first place, the journey to Rome itself, especially the shipwreck, is described with such minute and graphic details, that it seems likely to have been written down very soon afterwards, probably in that city.
Secondly, the Roman judges and officials are always represented as treating the Christians with fairness, and even kindness; and the writer leaves St. Paul appealing to Cæsar, with every hope of a favourable verdict. There is no sign of bitterness or ill-feeling anywhere. And all this would have been most unlikely after the great persecution in A.D. 64; when Christians regarded Rome with the utmost horror.[264] Compare the somewhat similar case of the Indian Mutiny. Can we imagine an Englishman in India writing soon after the Mutiny a history, say of Cawnpore, up to 1854, and then closing it, without ever letting a hint fall that he was aware of the terrible tragedy which happened in 1857, or showing the slightest ill-feeling towards its perpetrators? The only reasonable conclusion would be that such a history must have been written before the Mutiny. In the same way the Acts must have been written before Nero's great persecution.
[264] E.g., Rev. 17. 6.
Thirdly, the same sort of argument is afforded by the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Had the book been written after this, it is strange that the writer should seem to be entirely unaware of it; more especially as it had so close a bearing on the events described in the Acts, such as the Jewish law not being binding on Gentile Christians. And it is the more significant, because he records the prophecy of the event in his Gospel,[265] but nowhere hints that the prophecy had been fulfilled.
[265] Luke 19. 43.
Lastly, an early date is implied by the passage, where St. Paul tells his friends near Ephesus, that they would not see him again. It was quite natural for him to have said so at the time, as his feelings were very despondent; but no one, writing many years later, would have recorded it without comment; since it is almost certain that St. Paul, after his release from Rome, did revisit Ephesus.[266]
[266] Acts 20. 25, 38; 2 Tim. 4. 20.
On the whole, then, there is very strong evidence in favour of the Acts of the Apostles having been written by St. Luke about A.D. 60; and this of course proves an earlier date for St. Luke's Gospel. And this again proves a still earlier one for St. Mark's Gospel, which is now generally admitted to have been written before St. Luke's; and probably for St. Matthew's as well. The evidence of the Acts, then, while confirming our previous conclusion that the first three Gospels were certainly written before A.D. 70, enables us to add with some confidence that they were also written before A.D. 60. And, it may be added, Prof. Harnack, who long maintained the opposite view, has at last accepted this early date for all these Gospels.[267] The book has of course no direct bearing on the date of St. John's Gospel.
[267] Date of Acts, and Synoptic Gospels, translated by Wilkinson, 1911, pp. 99, 133, 134. Some writers would place them still earlier. Thus Canon Birks, dates them all between A.D. 42-51, and he gives strong reasons for thinking that St. Luke, and his Gospel, are referred to in 2 Cor. 8. 18. (Horæ Evangelicæ, 1892, edit., pp. 259, 281, 293); and Archdeacon Allen places the second Gospel, about A.D. 44, and the first about A.D. 50. (Introduction to the Books of the New Testament, 1913, p. 13.)