admit that there were two editions of Acts, you must make the same admission in the case of Luke. And conversely, if there was no second edition of the Gospel, must you not then look for some other explanation of the variations in Acts? For it seems quite certain that the variants in Luke xxiv. are most closely related to the text of Acts i. Or how else are the readings in Luke xxiv. 51-53 to be explained? Westcott and Hort have one way of explaining them. They say that καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν “was evidently inserted from an assumption that a separation from the disciples at the close of a Gospel must be the Ascension. The Ascension apparently did not lie within the proper scope of the Gospels, as seen in their genuine texts; its true place was at the head of the Acts of the Apostles as the preparation for the Day of Pentecost, and thus the beginning of the history of the Church.” That is all very well, and it may also be the case that προσκυνήσαντες αὐτόν in v. 52 is the natural result of the insertion of καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν. But how then are we to account for the interchange of εὐλογοῦντες and αἰνοῦντες in the next verse, which is found in precisely the same groups of witnesses?[242] If this explanation then is insufficient on account of verse 53, it may be confidently asserted that the omission of the Ascension and the Worship of the Exalted Lord by any later scribe is all but inconceivable from the moment that Luke was separated from Acts and placed among the Gospels. If such a thing were possible at all, it would be in the case of προσκυνήσαντες αὐτόν, as there is no express mention in Acts i. of the disciples worshipping. On the other hand, the omission becomes quite conceivable as soon as the author added a δεύτερος λόγος to the πρῶτος. So far these variants appear to me to fit in very well with Blass’s theory and with no other. Zahn, as far as I can see, has nowhere expressed any opinion regarding them, certainly he says nothing of the variation between αἰνοῦντες and εὐλογοῦντες, which is the one of most importance critically, though it is of least consequence materially.