(2) A second thing to be remembered is that, if our theory is true, _we do not know anything of the actual circumstances under which the new tradition was introduced into the Gospel; it may have been in haste_. Did the story reach the Evangelist at the last moment? Or, if not, was there a process of sifting and testing of the new information, which left little time when at length the fateful decision was taken, and the Evangelist took up his pen? Again we cannot prove these things, but again we cannot deny them. And if we cannot deny them, we must not ignore them. Only if we do ignore these possibilities, are we at liberty to insist that the reconstruction should have been more drastic. If, as we ourselves think, the supposition is reasonable, that i. 34 f. was added when the Evangelist had only just heard of the Virgin Birth tradition, we have clearly a good answer to the objection we are considering. The foregoing arguments are speculative; there are, however, more positive considerations to urge. In addition to what has been said, we may point out (3) the fact that _St. Luke’s writings left his hand without a painstaking final revision_, and (4) _the different effect upon the mind of a new piece of information as compared with a belief, which has been held for some time, and has already become an intellectual presupposition_. (3) _That St. Luke’s writings left his hands without a final revision is strongly supported by the literary phenomena of the two works._ The clearest evidence is found in the Acts, in which we probably have a closer literary parallel to the Birth Stories of Lk. i, ii than in the rest of the Gospel itself. Writing on the Acts (_Acts of the Apostles_, Eng. Tr., pp. 203 ff.) Harnack gives a list of more than two hundred “instances of inaccuracy and discrepancy”. Harnack does not accept them all, and shows that they are of different types, many of them being comparatively trifling and unimportant. Some are cases of anacoluthon and of transition from indirect to direct speech and vice versa. There are also “cases where St. Luke introduces persons with a certain unconcern, or in other places seems to forget that he has already introduced them” (p. 230). Harnack points out that “the details of a story are here and there inserted later or again earlier than their proper place” (p. 227), and he asserts that “instances of redundancy, of awkward repetition, of silence upon important points, and of extraordinary brevity, can be adduced from different parts of the book” (p. 230). He finds “instances of discrepancy” in the three accounts of the conversion of St. Paul, the letter of Claudius Lysias, the report of Festus, the last speech of St. Paul at Rome, and in other passages (p. 231).