By Professor EM Blaiklock MA Litt D
CHAPTER FIVE
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
The Vindication of Luke the Historian
The career of Sir William Ramsay-German criticism of Luke-Ramsay's task-the frontier of Lycaonia-the gods of Lystra-the standing of Philippi-its "praetors" —the
"politarchs" of Thessalonica-the "protos" of Malta-Ramsay's "South Galatian theory" —the land of Phrygia
—its population and Christian remains-the family of Sergius Paulus-Demetrius of Ephesus-summary.
Any good library of New Testament literature contains a dozen sturdy volumes on Luke, Paul, and the Church of Asia Minor from the pen of William Mitchell Ramsay, classical scholar, archaeologist, and his-torian, to whose work we have already made brief reference. The archaeology of the Acts of the Apostles is bound intimately with the record of Sir William's life and career, and many who are well acquainted with his writings are unaware of the romance of the personal experience which lies behind them.
Speaking on one occasion in reminiscent mood before the students of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, the great New Testament scholar told how he had planned his life far otherwise. For the young classicist who sought a life of learning in Victoria's England, the path was hedged and straight. It led from the student's bench in mellow and ancient colleges through scholarship and fellowship to the dons' table and the professor's chair.
From such a course, early in his life, Ramsay was deflected by illness and misfortune. There is something Pauline in the story of events which followed. In his humble testimony in Chicago Sir William told how, though he knew little more faith than that which consisted in a hunger for truth and God, circumstances, with seeming compulsion, headed him in the direction of Asia Minor.
In strange and unexpected fashion provision and opportunity brought the worker to his task, but in many ways he was still curiously unfitted to undertake it. It was the heyday of that destructive criticism which began in the universities of Germany, and inspired, the world over, that revulsion from Biblical Christianity for which this century has paid dearly. The breakdown of German Christianity, and the vast weakness of a still convalescent Christendom before dynamic evil, are two visible results of the reckless scholarship which began with Wellhausen, and left no tradition unassailed.
Ramsay, the future champion of Luke and Paul, accepted with little question the popular contemporary verdict that the Acts of the Apostles was a late second century piece of imaginative reconstruction. The young scholar indeed had no intention of spending the three years available under his research grant in anything so trivial as the discredited records of New Testament romancing.
It was the compulsion of fact, at work upon an honest mind, which brought about the change. Acts 14: 6 states: "They ... fled into Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia. ..."
In other words, in passing from Iconium
to Lystra, one crossed the frontier. Most geographers, basing their contention on what appeared to be competent ancient authority, dismissed the Lucan statement as a mistake. Local inscriptions, obviously more trustworthy than ancient or modern geographers, convinced Ramsay that the writer of Acts was correct. The frontier of Lycaonia lay where he said it did.
Such was the beginning of a long process of delighted discovery which convinced Ramsay that, in Luke the historian, he was dealing with one of the great writers of Greece.
For accuracy of detail, and for evocation of atmosphere, Luke stands, in fact, with Thucydides. The Acts of the Apostles is no shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record of great events. And it was the spade work of archaeology which first revealed the truth.
Very many illustrations might be culled from the story of Ramsay's work. For example, in the same Lystra to which Paul escaped from Iconium, Ramsay found a native inscription dedicating a statue to Zeus and Hermes. The two deities were evidently linked in the local cult.
These twain, it will be remembered, Latinized in the Authorized Version as Jupiter and Mercury, were the gods to whom the enthusiastic Lycaonians likened Paul and Barnabas.
The accuracy of the background is striking.
Luke's meticulous care for the correct designation and definition is again and again apparent. When Paul crossed from Asia into Europe, Luke, his chronicler, on bringing the story to Philippi, described the town as " the first of the district." Even Hort marked this as a mistake, since the Greek word meris appeared never to be used for "region." The Egyptian papyri, however, revealed that Luke's Greek was better than that of his scholarly editor.
The word, it was obvious, was quite commonly used for "district" in the first century, and especially in Macedonia.
But another difficulty remained. It has been demonstrated with some likelihood that Luke came from Philippi.
Had enthusiasm for his hometown led the physician astray, for was not Amphipolis the local capital? Loyalty did play a part, and the amiable foible is a clear mark of
Lucan authenticity. But there was no distortion of fact.
" Afterwards," writes Ramsay,'"Philippi quite outstripped its rival; but it was at that time in such a position that Amphipolis was ranked first by general consent, Philippi first by its own consent. These cases of rivalry between two or even three cities for the dignity and title of 'first' are familiar to every student of the history of the Greek cities; and though no other evidence is known to show that Philippi had as yet begun to claim the title, yet this single passage is conclusive. The descriptive phrase is like a lightning flash in the darkness of local history, revealing in startling clearness the whole situation to those whose eyes are trained to catch the character of Greek city-history. ..." It is odd to see the personality of the historian peep out. And what, in the light of it, of the rash theory of second-century romancing?
Luke also calls the local officials of Philippi "praetors." The term seemed incorrect until inscriptions established the fact that the title was a courtesy one for the magistrates of the Roman colony; and as usual Luke uses the term commonly employed in educated circles.
Thessalonica provides another chastening example. In Acts 17: 6, 8, Luke twice calls the "rulers" of the city
"politarchs." Since the term was unknown elsewhere, the omniscient critics of the historian dismissed the word as yet another mistake. Today it is to be read high and clear in an arch spanning a street of modern Salonica, and sixteen other examples occur. A similar story of vindication could be told of the title "protos," applied in Acts
28: 7 to the Governor of Malta.
One of Ramsay's major historical theories remains to be examined, for the evidence on which it was based is largely archaeological. One should rather say epigraphical, for, as we have already illustrated, it is the mute and solid evidence of the ancient inscription which has played so large a part in the establishment of Luke's historical reputation. Epigraphy was the main source of the "south Galatian theory."
Phrygia was an ancient country of Asia Minor noted in legend and history. It was immensely rich, for it straddled the ancient trade routes, and its civilization was early and precocious. In Roman times the area was comprehended in the provinces of Asia and Galatia, Of the latter province the northern portion was wild and uncivilized, and populated largely by descendants of the Gallo-Celtic tribesmen who had broken into Asia Minor in an old tribal migration, and had given Galatia
and Antioch.
It was perversely assumed that Paul's Galatian churches were in the north.
The assumption was based on
numerous vague notions-that southern Galatia was Greek not Phrygian, that the instability of the Galatian church was a fruit of Celtic headiness, and so forth. The careful collection of epigraphical evidence proved again that Luke's geographical terminology (for example in Acts do i could noebe, as Ramsay phrases it, " more precisc, One inscription speaks of the " Phrygian" Antioch, and others have made it quite obvious that the administrative district of South Galatia was Phrygian in language and tradition. There was, moreover, an uprooted minority of Jews whose presence accounts for the Judaistic tendencies in the church. It is clear, too, on epigraphical as well as historical evidence, that the whole area saw one of the earliest triumphs of Christian evangelism. There is an enormous corpus of Christian inscriptions from the area.
And when one remembers that the Crusaders marched
through Asia Minor to Israel without leaving one written memorial, the literacy of the Asian Christians is emphasized.
Ramsay's demonstration that Galatia in the Acts of the Apostles was South Galatia has quite solved the difficulties which beset those who regarded the book as an unreliable fabrication of late origin. On the contrary, it stands proven that the Galatian passages in the book could only have been written by a first-century historian who spoke naturally in the geographical terminology of contemporary inscriptions.
This brief account of the archaeological contribution to the understanding of the Acts of the Apostles has naturally omitted much. It is amazing that so much historical material has survived time's "wreckful siege." One would not expect, for example, in a region so trampled by the destructiveness of men, clear evidence of the family of Sergius Paulus. Yet two inscriptions appear to refer to a son and a daughter of the Roman governor of Cyprus.
And from the ruins of Ephesus, who would have expected the carved name of Demetrius to emerge? It cannot be proved that "Demetrius, son of Menophilus, son of Tryphon of the Thousand Boreis" was, in fact, the persecutor of Paul, but Hicks has made, in Ramsay's view, a strong case for the identification.
This account has been largely confined to Ramsay's work, but that is not to suggest that others have not followed in the trail he so triumphantly blazed. They have, and their patient reconstruction would demand more pages for the telling than are available here. This must suffice, and enough has been said to demonstrate the discomfiture of those who were too ready to dismiss an important book of the New Testament as something less than faith held it to be and than old tradition claimed.
J. A. Thomson' summarizes the evidence well in a terse booklet. Luke, he shows, has been proved correct in his geographical and political remarks on provinces, regions and cities (Acts 19: 49; 14: 6; 15: 41; 16: 2, 6-8); correct in his intimate reporting of local custom (Acts
14: 11; 17: 34; 19: 35); correct in his nomenclature for local officials (Acts 13: 7; 16: 20, 35; 17: 6; 18: 12;
19: 22, 3I; 28: 7); correct in his reporting of local religious facts (Acts 14: 11, 12; 19: 26-28); and correct in his knowledge of Greek and Asian cities (Acts 16: 19, 19;
17: 17, 19, 22; 18: 12; 19: 26, 27). Most of the vindication thus established has come from archaeological
research, and that research has vast areas of investigation still to cover. The Dead Sea Scrolls may provide a final illustration of this remark. Before the discovery of these documents translators of the Old Testament depended upon Hebrew texts based on a rabbinical tradition of about A.D. 100. The Scrolls provided original texts which antedate this version by something like two centuries.
Some difficulties have been cleared up in consequence, and the New Testament has shared the advantage. The standard text of Exodus 1:5, for example, reads: " All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons..." In Stephen's magnificent speech of Acts 7, the number given is seventy-five (v. 14). Some ingenuity has been expended in reconciling a contradiction in which both the careful Luke, and the scholarly Stephen seemed to be involved.
A text of Exodus from the Qumran collection has now appeared to support Stephen. It reads, "seventy-five," and suggests that seventy was a reviser's error, perhaps based on some forgotten tradition.