In the minute description of the voyage and shipwreck, Koch sees evidence that the writer's experiences as Paul's companion on the voyage were still fresh in his mind. The details would scarcely have been remembered and recorded so vividly after twenty-five years. Even if a journal had been kept, it is still strange that the minutiæ of the story should have been retained in the perspective of the finished history. "The author still stands under the fresh impression of the wonderful divine guidance through which Paul, in spite of all dangers and hindrances, reached his long sought goal." "What interest would a reader of later times have in details such as that on an Alexandrian ship precisely two hundred and seventy-six men were found?" In the seventh or eighth decade more important contemporary events would have stood in the foreground of interest.[272] A striking parallelism has been observed between the Third Gospel and the Acts, while, supposing Paul's death to have occurred, it is urged that Luke has missed "the finest--the most essential--point of the whole comparison, the death of Paul."[273] 272: H. Koch: "Die Abfassungszeit des lukanischen Geschichtswerkes," pp. 61, 62. 273: D. Walker: "The Gift of Tongues," p. 228. The assumed intention of the author to write a third treatise does not help the matter much. It is absurd, Ramsay admits, to relate the earlier stages of the trial at great length, "and wholly omit the final result which gives them intelligibility and purpose"; but his conclusion is that "it therefore follows that a sequel was contemplated by the author," a sequel which the "first" (prôtos) of Acts i. 1 implies, if Luke "wrote as correct Greek as Paul wrote."[274] But the intention of writing a sequel does not explain the failure to mention the outcome of the trial. Luke would have no motive like the writer of a continued story for keeping the reader in suspense, and the simple addition of the words "until his release or acquittal" would have relieved the suspense, and given "intelligibility and purpose" to the detailed description of the earlier stages of the trial. The account of the Ascension is not omitted from Luke's Gospel although given in greater detail in the Acts. There is nothing un-philosophical in the abrupt ending of a history which brings the record down to the date of writing. 274: "Paul the Traveller," pp. 307-309. The use of "first" (πρῶτos [prôtos]) is not decisive, for it is used where there are but two objects in the comparison in Acts xii. 10 (and see vii. 12), Hebrews ix. 8 and 15, Apoc. xx. 5, and even I Corinthians xv. 47.