A very favourite argument against the genuineness of Acts is that Acts xv., in its account of St. Paul's third visit to Jerusalem, A.D. 49, is inconsistent with Gal. ii. It is asserted that the author deliberately falsified the story in order to represent the older apostles as promoting the union of Gentile and Jewish Christians, some modern critics assuming that the apostles would never have done anything so Catholic. But there is no real discrepancy between the two accounts, if we are ready to believe that St. Luke gives the public and exterior view of the proceedings, while St. Paul, as is natural, describes the personal aspect of those proceedings. According to Acts xv. 2, St. Paul and St. Barnabas were _deputed_ to go to Jerusalem by the Church at Antioch; according to Gal. ii. 2, St. Paul went there "by revelation." The internal motive is surely compatible with the external. Again, both Acts xv. and Gal. ii. show that the momentous Council at Jerusalem included private and public meetings. The two accounts fit one another all the better in consequence of the fact that Acts {106} lays stress upon the public settlement (xv. 7 f.) and Galatians upon a private conference (ii. 2). Acts shows that there was much dispute, and Galatians shows that the dispute included opposition to St. Paul's methods. Acts shows that St. Paul greatly desired to be on good terms with the older apostles, Galatians shows that they gave him the right hand of fellowship. The historical situation, the occasion of dispute (viz. the attempt to impose circumcision on the Gentiles), the chief persons concerned and the feelings which they entertained, are the same in both books.[3] As to the fact that St. Paul in Galatians makes no mention of a second visit to Jerusalem about A.D. 46, he ignores it because it was devoted to the specific business mentioned in Acts xi. 30; xii. 25. Nothing arose out of it affecting his relations with the first apostles or his own apostleship. A description of this visit was therefore quite beside the argument of Galatians. We cannot therefore say that its omission in Galatians proves that it was an invention of the author of Acts.