The matter of text is only one of several problems about Acts of which it may be said that none of the proposed solutions is entirely satisfactory. Often, if one must choose, the choice can be justified as nothing better than the least unsatisfactory of alternatives. One has the unhappy feeling that other possibilities exist so unexpected that only a knowledge of the actual facts would recover them. Sometimes when we do know the causes of literary phenomenon we realize that without that knowledge no one would guess the real history of the document in question. As has been said of the problem here before us: 'There must be a human explanation of these discrepancies, but our present knowledge does not suffice to provide it. All that we can do is to consider each successive explanation as it is offered, and to test it in the light of bibliographical knowledge, of human probabilities, and of common sense.'
- from page 154, The Book of Acts in History