“Perfect Accuracy”

A. Rendle Short writes in Modern Discovery and the Bible about the book of Acts: “It was the Roman custom to govern the provinces of their far-flung empire by continuing as far as they safely could the local system of administration, and consequently the authorities in different districts went by many different names. No one, unless he were either an observant traveller or a painstaking student of records, could possibly give all these gentry their correct denomination. It is one of the most searching tests of Luke’s historical sense that he always manages to achieve perfect accuracy. In several cases it is only the evidence of a coin, or an inscription, that has given us the necessary information to check him; the recognized Roman historians do not adventure themselves on such a difficult terrain. Thus Luke calls Herod and Lysanias tetrarchs; so does Josephus. Herod Agrippa, who slew James with the sword and cast Peter into prison, is called a king; Josephus tells us how he became friendly at Rome with Gaius Caesar (Caligula) and was rewarded with a royal title when Caligula came to be emperor.

“The governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, is called proconsul. . . . Not long before, Cyprus had been an imperial province, and governed by a propraetor or legatus, but in Paul’s time, as is shown by Cyprian coins, both in Greek and Latin, the correct title was proconsul. A Greek inscription found at Soloi on the north coast of Cyprus is dated ‘in the proconsulship of Paulus,’ probably the same as Sergius Paulus. . . . At Thessalonica the city magnates took the quite unusual title of politarchs, a name unknown to classical literature. It would be quite unfamiliar to us, except from Luke’s use of it, if it were not for the fact that it appears in inscriptions. . . . Achaia under Augustus was a senatorial province, under Tiberius it was directly under the emperor, but under Claudius, as Tacitus tells us, it reverted to the senate, and therefore Gallio’s correct title [Acts 18:12] was proconsul. . . . Luke is equally happy, equally accurate, in his geography and his travel experiences.”