F.F. Bruce on St Luke's portrait of St Paul

The following article is now online in PDF:

F.F. Bruce, "St Luke's portrait of St Paul," George Dion. Dragas, General editor., Aksum - Thyateira. A Festschrift for Archbishop Methodios of Thyateira and Great Britian. London: Thyateira House, 1985. pp.181-191.

I found this a particularly interesting study. I would guess that, given its somewhat obscure source, that very few people would have read it before. One of my favourite parts is Bruce's suggested answer to the question why Luke seems reluctant to mention Paul's collection for the poor of Jerusalem in Acts:

The reason, I suggest, was apologetic. When the time came for Paul’s accusers to formulate their charges against him at the hearing of his appeal before the imperial tribunal, the Jerusalem relief fund could well have been misrepresented as an inter­ference with the collection and delivery of the annual half-shekel tax to the temple authorities in Jerusalem. The organization and conveyance of this tax enjoyed the express protection of Roman law. But the half-shekel tax was exacted from Jews; Paul’s relief fund was contributed by Gentiles. Even so, it could have been argued that the Gentile contributors were po­tential proselytes to Judaism, whom Paul had enticed away from the synagogue into an association of his own, and that the relief fund represented an improper diversion of money which, but for Paul’s activity, would have gone ultimately to swell the temple re­venue. The accusation that Paul had violated the sanctity of the temple by bringing Gentiles within pro­hibited bounds (Acts 21:28; 24:6) could not be su­stained since no witnesses could be produced; but here was a more subtle attempt to convict Paul of infringing the temple privileges, and one which a skilled advocate could present in a persuasive way. In former times it was argued by more than one scholar that Luke’s narrative was written to provide Paul’s counsel for the defence with factual material to be used at his trial before Caesar; if this thesis can no longer be sustained in its earlier form, it may still be argued that a document prepared for this purpose served Luke as one of his sources for this part of his narrative. (Why could such a document not have been prepared by Luke himself?) The issue of the relief fund would in that case have been too delicate to be treated in detail; Luke, or the author of his source, judged that Paul’s reference to “alms and offerings” in his defence before Felix was as much as it was politic to say on this subject. If the “alms and offerings” are said to have been designed for Paul’s “nation”, this should not be dismissed as a suggestio falsi: Paul himself hints here and there in his letters that he envisaged the relief fund not only as a gift to the church of Jerusalem but also as a witness to the whole Jewish nation at the centre of its life.