rder to represent the older apostles as
promoting the union of Gentile and Jewish Christians, some modern
critics assuming that the apostles would never have done anything so
Catholic. But there is no real discrepancy between the two accounts,
if we are ready to believe that St. Luke gives the public and exterior
view of the proceedings, while St. Paul, as is natural, describes the
personal aspect of those proceedings. According to Acts xv. 2, St.
Paul and St. Barnabas were _deputed_ to go to Jerusalem by the Church
at Antioch; according to Gal. ii. 2, St. Paul went there "by
revelation." The internal motive is surely compatible with the
external. Again, both Acts xv. and Gal. ii. show that the momentous
Council at Jerusalem included private and public meetings. The two
accounts fit one another all the better in consequence of the fact that
Acts {106} lays stress upon the public settlement (xv. 7 f.) and
Galatians upon a private conference (ii. 2). Acts shows that there was
much dispute, and Galatians shows that the dispute included opposition
to St. Paul's methods. Acts shows that St. Paul greatly desired to be
on good terms with the older apostles, Galatians shows that they gave
him the right hand of fellowship. The historical situation, the
occasion of dispute (viz. the attempt to impose circumcision on the
Gentiles), the chief persons concerned and the feelings which they
entertained, are the same in both books.[3]

As to the fact that St. Paul in Galatians makes no mention of a second
visit to Jerusalem about A.D. 46, he ignores it because it was devoted
to the specific business mentioned in Acts xi. 30; xii. 25. Nothing
arose out of it affecting his relations with the first apostles or his
own apostleship. A description of this visit was therefore quite
beside the argument of Galatians. We cannot therefore say that its
omission in Galatians proves that it was an invention of the author of
Acts.

The fact that Acts does not depend upon St. Paul's writings and
nevertheless shows many undesigned points of contact with them, leads
us to a very important conclusion. This conclusion is that the writer
of Acts was a companion of St. Paul. It is incredible that a later
writer, who took an eager interest in St. Paul's adventures, should
have made no use of St. Paul's letters. Those letters made a deep
impression upon St. Paul's contemporaries (cf. 2 Cor. x. 10), and they
were carefully treasured by all succ