with which our episode commences, v. 15: "And in these days" [------], Peter conveys anything but the impression of any very recent return to Jerusalem. If the Apostles had been even a few days there, the incongruity of the speech would remain undiminished; for the 120 brethren who are said to have been present must chiefly have been residents in Jerusalem, and cannot be. supposed also to have been absent, and, in any case, events which are represented as so well known to all the dwellers in Jerusalem, must certainly have been familiar to the small Christian community, whose interest in the matter was so specially great. Moreover, according to the first Synoptic, as soon as Judas sees that Jesus is condemned, he brings the money back to the chief priests, casts it down and goes and hangs himself, xxvii. 3 ff. This is related even before the final condemnation of Jesus and before his crucifixion, and the reader is led to believe that Judas at once put an end to himself, so that the disciples, who are represented as being still in Jerusalem for at least eight days after the resurrection, must have been there at the time. With regard to the singular expressions in verse 19, this theory goes on to suppose that, out of consideration for Greek fellow-believers, Peter had probably already begun to speak in the Greek tongue; and when he designates the language of the dwellers in Jerusalem as "their own dialect," he does not thereby mean Hebrew in itself, but their own expression, the peculiar confession of the opposite party, which admitted the cruel treachery towards Jesus, in that they named the piece of ground Hakel Damah.(1) Here, again, what assumptions! It is generally recognized that Peter must have spoken in {105} Aramaic, and even if he did not, [------](1) cannot mean anything but the language of "all the-dwellers at Jerusalem." In a speech delivered at Jerusalem, in any language, to an audience consisting at least in considerable part of inhabitants of the place, and certainly almost entirely of persons whose native tongue was Aramaic, to tell them that the inhabitants called a certain field "in their own tongue" Acheldamach, giving them at the same time a translation of the word, is inconceivable to most critics, even including apologists.