Since it is generally agreed that the author of Luke–Acts was not an eye-witness of the life of Jesus or of the beginnings of the Christian church, the question of the sources he employed has always loomed large in critical studies of his work.2 In the case of the early chapters of Acts, Harnack may be taken as typical of the older approach, which was confident of being able to practise source-analysis and to assign material by chapter and verse to a ‘Jerusalem–Caesarea source’ and an ‘Antioch source’.3 Especially since the studies of Martin Dibelius, there has been a tendency on the part of many scholars to ascribe much more to the creative hand of Luke himself, above all in the speeches of Acts, which are held to have been freely composed by Luke in the manner of Greek and Roman historians.4