The Acts of the Apostles

18 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
mid the reference to the famine under Claudius together
with the reference to Herod Agrippa> We have, there-
fore, no certainty whether the author has been able
to give us the events of the first period in their
correct order ,^ and it is most difficult to discover the
actual date of each occurrence. In regard to the
chronological order one for instance may, indeed
must, question whether the election of an apostle (if
it took place at all and in the manner recorded in
the Acts) fell within the first forty days ; whether the
different accounts of the imprisonment of apostles are
to be distinguished from one another ; when it was
that the conversion of St. Paul took place ; when the
conversion of the Samaritans (we are told that whole
villages were to a great extent Christianised, viii. 25) ;
when the mission of St. Philip to the coastland
when it was that Cornelius was converted; when it
was that the first Gentile Christian community was
founded in Antioch ; and above all, whether the
1 This notice aCFords us the best datum for the absolute chrono-
logy of the first half of the Apostolic epoch. The persecution of
the Apostles by Herod Agrippa (king of Judea a.d. 41-44), which
was shortly followed by the death of the king, took place not long
before the year a.d. 44, the year of Herod's death. At that time
the Apostles left Jerusalem. Now a very ancient tradition (see my
Chronologic, I. s. 243/.) reports that the Apostles remained twelve
years in Jerusalem in accordance with a command given by our
Lord. The command was undoubtedly invented in order to justify
the departure of the Apostles in the twelfth year. It brings us to
the year A.D. 42, a calculation which is confirmed by Acts xii. 1 ff.
17 : " Peter departed to another place " ; while in viii. 1 stress is
laid upon the fact that the Apostles remained in Jerusalem during
the first persecution.
* In V. 36 (Theudas) there probably lies a gross chronological
;