admitted by all to be sources of primary importance; yet either passage might be misunderstood if it were taken alone. Thus the danger of interpreting Gal. ii entirely without reference to anything else is signally manifested by a comparison with 1 Cor. xv. 1-11. The First Epistle to the Corinthians must be allowed to cast light upon Galatians. But if so, may not the same privilege be granted to the Book of Acts? As a matter of fact, the privilege is being granted to the Book of Acts by a larger and larger number of modern scholars. Baur demanded that the Pauline Epistles should be interpreted by themselves, entirely without reference to Acts. But as J. Weiss[71] pertinently remarks, such interpretation is quite impossible; the Epistles taken by themselves are unintelligible; they can be interpreted only when placed in the biographical outline provided by the historian. Of course, that outline might be discredited by a comparison with the Epistles; the divergences might really be contradictions. Comparison of Acts with the Epistles is therefore a matter of fundamental importance. But that comparison, as it has been undertaken at some length in the two preceding chapters of the present discussion, has resulted favorably to the Book of Acts. The divergences between Acts and Pauline Epistles are no more to be regarded as contradictions than are the divergences between various passages in the Epistles themselves; and at many points the historical work casts a flood of light upon the words of Paul. [71] See p. 40, footnote 1.