Strauss's assumptions, it
would be easy to reduce Swift to as fabulous a personage as his own
Lemuel Gulliver. +Any apparent discrepancy with either themselves or
profane historians is usually sufficient to satisfy Dr. Strauss. He
is ever ready to conclude that the discrepancy is real, and that the
profane historians are right. In adducing some striking instances of the
minute accuracy of Luke, only revealed by obscure collateral evidence
(historic or numismatic) discovered since, Tholuck remarks, 'What an
outcry would have been made had not the specious appearance of error
been thus obviated. Luke calls Gallio proconsul of Achaia: we should
not have expected it, since though Achaia was originally to senatorial
province. Tiberius had changed it into an imperial one, and the title
of its governor, therefore, was procurator; now a passage in Suetonius
informs us, that Claudius had restored the province to the senate.' The
same Evangelist calls Sergius Paulus governor of Cyprus; yet we might
have expected to find only a praetor, since Cyprus was an imperial
province. In this case, again: says Tholuck, the correctness of the
historian has been remarkable attested. Coins and later still a passage
in Dion Cassius, have been found, giving proof that Augustus restored
the province to the senate; and thus, as if to vindicate the Evangelist,
the Roman historian adds, 'Thus, proconsuls began to be sent into that
island also.
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