are agreed that none of the verses can be considered parenthetic.(1) Some apologists, however, who feel that neither of the obnoxious verses can be thus explained, endeavour to overcome the difficulty by asserting that the words: "in their own tongue" [------] and: "that is: the field of blood" [------] in verse 19, are merely explanatory and inserted by the Author of Acts.(2) It is unnecessary to say that this explanation is purely arbitrary, and that there is no ground, except the difficulty itself, upon which their exclusion from the speech can be based. In the cases to which we have hitherto referred, the impossibility of supposing that Peter could have spoken in this way has led writers to lay the responsibility of unacknowledged interpolations in the speech upon the Author of Acts, thus at once relieving the Apostle. There are some apologists, however, who do not adopt this expedient, but attempt to meet the difficulty in other ways, while accepting the whole as a speech of Peter. According to one theory, those who object that Peter could not have thus related the death of Judas to people who must already have been well acquainted with the circumstances have totally overlooked the fact, that a peculiar view of what has occurred is taken in the narrative, and that this peculiar view is the principal point of it According to the statement made, Judas met his miserable end in the very field which he had bought with {102} the price of blood. It is this circumstance, it appears, which Peter brings prominently forward and represents as a manifest and tangible dispensation of Divine justice.(1) Unfortunately, however, this is clearly an imaginary moral attached to the narrative by the apologist, and is not the object of the supposed speaker, who rather desires to justify the forced application to Judas of the quotations in verse 20, which are directly connected with the preceding by [------]. Moreover, no explanation is here offered of the extraordinary expressions in verse 19 addressed to citizens of Jerusalem by a Jew in their own tongue. Another explanation, which includes these points, is still more striking. With regard to the improbability of Peter's relating, in such a way, the death of Judas, it is argued that, according to the Evangelists, the disciples went from Jerusalem back to Galilee some eight days after the resurrection, and only returned, earlier than usual, before Pentecost to await the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus. Peter and his companions, it is supposed, only after their return became acquainted with the fate of Judas, which had taken place during their absence, and the matter was, therefore, quite new to them; besides, it is added, a speaker is often obliged on account of some connection with his subject to relate facts already known.(2) It is true that some of the Evangelists represent this return to Galilee(3) as having taken place, but the author of the third Gospel and the Acts not only