It is impossible, we think, to examine this analysis, in which we might fairly have included other points which we have passed over, without feeling the certain conviction that the speech of Stephen was composed by the author of the rest of the Acts of the Apostles. It may not be out of place to quote some remarks of Lekebusch at the close of an examination of the language of the Acts in general, undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the literary characteristics of the book, which, although originally having no direct reference to this episode in particular, may well serve to illustrate our own results:—"An unprejudiced critic must have acquired the conviction from the foregoing linguistic examination that, throughout the whole of the Acts of the Apostles, and partly also the
Gospel, the same style of language and expression generally prevails, and therefore that our book is an original work, independent of written sources on the whole, and proceeding from a single pen. For when the same expressions are everywhere found, when a long row of words which only recur in the Gospel and Acts, or comparatively only very seldom in other works of the New Testament, appear equally in all parts, when certain forme of words, peculiarities of word-order, construction and phraseology, indeed even whole sentences, recur in the different sections, a compilation out of documents by different earlier writers can no longer be thought of, and it is 'beyond doubt, that we have to consider our writing as the work of a single author, who has impressed upon it the stamp of a distinct literary style' (Zeller, Theol. Jahrb..1851, p. 107). The use of written sources is certainly not directly excluded by this, and probably the linguistic peculiarities, of which some of course exist in isolated sections of our work, may be referred to this. But as these peculiarities consist chiefly of [———], which may rather be ascribed to the richness of the author's vocabulary than to his talent for compilation, and in comparison with the great majority of points of agreement almost disappear, we must from the first be prepossessed against the theory that our author made use of written sources, and only allow ourselves to be moved to such a conclusion by further distinct phenomena in the various parts of our book, especially as the prologue of the Gospel, so often quoted for the purpose, does not at all support it. But in any case, as has already been remarked, the opinion that, in the Acts of the Apostles, the several parts are strung together almost without
alteration, is quite irreconcilable with the result of our linguistic examination. Zeller rightly says:—'Were the author so dependent a compiler, the traces of such a proceeding must necessarily become apparent in a thorough dissimilarity of language and expression. And this dissimilarity would be all the greater if his sources, as in that case we could scarcely help admitting, belonged to widely separated spheres as regards language and mode of thought. On the other hand, it would be altogether inexplicable that, in all parts of the work, the same favourite expressions, the same turns, the same peculiarities of vocabulary and syntax should meet us. This phenomenon only becomes conceivable when we suppose that the contents of our work were brought into their present form by one and the same person, and that the work as it lies before us was not merely compiled by some one, but was also composed by him.'"(1)
Should an attempt be made to argue that, even if it be conceded that the language is that of the Author of Acts, the sentiments may be those actually expressed by Stephen, it would at once be obvious that such an explanation is not only purely arbitrary and incapable of proof, but opposed to the facts of the case. It is not the language only which can be traced to the Author of the rest of the Acts but, as we have shown, the whole plan of the speech is the same as that of others in different parts of the work. Stephen speaks exactly as Peter does before him and Paul at a later period. There is just that amount of variety which a writer of not unlimited resources can introduce to express the views of
different men under different circumstances, but there is so much which is nevertheless common to them all, that community of authorship cannot be denied. On the other hand, the improbabilities of the narrative, the singular fact that Stephen is not mentioned by the Apostle Paul, and the peculiarities which may be detected in the speech itself receive their very simple explanation when linguistic analysis so clearly demonstrates that, whatever small nucleus of fact may lie at the basis of the episode, the speech actually ascribed to the martyr Stephen is nothing more than a later composition put into his mouth by the Author of the Acts.
