Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 39:156 (Oct 1882)
Article: The End Of Luke’s Gospel And The Beginning Of The Acts. Two Studies
Author: Theodore Dwight Woolsey

BSac 39:156 (Oct 1882) p. 593

The End Of Luke’s Gospel And The Beginning Of The Acts.
Two Studies

Theodore D. Woolsey

At the close of his Gospel, Luke, or whoever may be the author of the Gospel called by his name, subjoins immediately to the account of the risen Christ’s visit to the eleven, on the evening of the resurrection day, the narrative of the ascension. In doing this he gives no notice to the reader that any interval of time passed between the two events longer than that between early morning and early evening. At the beginning of the second narrative, however, we find him declaring that the ascension took place forty days after the resurrection, and that there were repeated interviews between Jesus and the apostles in this period of time. If Luke had not written a second book, no other explanation (of the end of the Gospel) could have been admitted, save that he conceived of the ascension as taking place on the same day with the resurrection. But the first book has been almost uniformly interpreted by the second. There has been a general agreement that Luke threw together in a summary way, at the close of his first narrative, the last events which he had intended to include in it, without pointing out their distance from one another, — without that historical perspective, in short, which we should expect from a practised

BSac 39:156 (Oct 1882) p. 594

historian. Perhaps he designed to be more full when he should continue his narrative of the events subsequent to the departure of Christ from the presence of his disciples. This continuation, or second book he may have already projected, and meanwhile Theophilus, an ‘instructed’ Christian, had already so much knowledge of the great facts of the life of Christ that a brief notice was all that was here demanded. The ascension pointed in two directions,— towards the life on earth thus glorified at its close, and towards the kingdom of heaven, begun by apostolic labors and by the presence of the Holy Spirit, for which Christ’s going away was essential.

Very little difficulty has been found by most of the commentators in attempting to reconcile the two narratives. Thus, Euthymius Zigabenus, in commenting on Luke 24:50, simply says: “He [Jesus] led them out not then, but on the fortieth day after the resurrection. For the evangelist passed over (παρέδραμεν) the intermediate events.” And it is enough to refer to Ellicott’s lectures on the life of Christ as expressing the current modern opinion on this point.

Meyer, however, a careful, able, honest, and Christian scholar, — one who changed many of his opinions between the publication of the first editions of his commentaries and his death...