Understanding the Book of Acts in History (Bible History Online Quotes)

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William Mitchell Ramsay

Understanding the Book of Acts

"Luke's style is compressed to the highest degree; and he expects a great deal from the reader. He does not attempt to sketch the surroundings and set the whole scene like a picture before the reader; he state's the bare facts that seem to him important, and leaves the reader to imagine the situation. But there are many cases in which, to catch his meaning properly, you must imagine yourself standing with Paul on the deck of the ship, or before the Roman official; and unless you reproduce the scene in imagination, you miss the sense. Hence, though his style is simple and clear, yet it often becomes obscure from its brevity; and the meaning is lost, because the reader has an incomplete, or a positively false idea of the situation. It is always hard to re-create the remote past; knowledge, imagination, and, above all, sympathy and love are all needed. But Asia minor, in which the scene is often laid, was not merely little known, but positively wrongly known."

W. M. Ramsay, The Morgan Lectures for 1894 in the Auburn Theological Seminary.

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