14 GIANCARLO BIGUZZI connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained” (Deut 19,15; but cf. Deut 17,6 as well). According to Morgenthaler, it is precisely because Peter has John (the shadowy John!) at his side that, in the first place, he feels authorized to say, in the plural: “ To this we are witnesses — oy hmeıv martyrev esmen ” (Acts üΩ ˜ ¥ ¥ß 3,15), and in the second, Luke is able to assure Theophilus of the asphaleia (Luke 1,4) of the things to which he is referring (“die S i c h e r h e i t der Dinge”) 24 . Even though Mogenthaler finally exhausts his intuition in the discovery of the presence of the law of the two witnesses everywhere 25, the perspective he opens up is rewarding. That law that regulated the testimony to more than one in the tribunals both in the case of homicide (Num 35) and in all other crimes (Deut 19), came to be applied by extension and in a metaphorical sense through the marker “two” to the witnesses of the Gospel. The Epistle to the Hebrews refers to the law of the two witnesses in order to establish an argument a fortiori: “Anyone who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy ‘on the testimony of two or three witnesses’. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God etc. ? ” (Heb 10,28-29). The Fourth Gospel refers to the same law in order to establish the legitimacy of the joint testimony of Jesus and the Father: “In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. I testify on my own behalf, and the Fa- Objecting to VON HARNACK, Lukas der Arzt, 107, R. Morgenthaler 24 writes : “Nun, es geht Lk., weit entfernt von einer selbstherrlichen Einschwär- zung eines blinden Passagiers, um die Stellung eines zweiten Zeugen für das Berichtete ! Johannes ist ja immer mit dabei gewesen, und Petrus sagt in seinen Reden beharrlich: ‘Des sind wir Zeugen ’ (...). Die Sicherheit der Dinge, die er d e m Theophilus gewährleisten will, begründet er auf diese Weise” — R. MORGENTHALER, Die lukanische Geschichtsschreibung als Zeugnis. Gestalt und Gehalt der Kunst des Lukas (Zürich 1949) II, 8-9. MORGENTHALER, Die lukanische Geschichtsschreibung, 11-13, finds the 25 law of the two witnesses applied in the pairs of geographical names, in the etymological figures, in the two elements of an opposition, in the double voca- tives, and even in tautologies. A rule for him is that, where something is repeated, there is a double testimony in order to give reliability to what is re- ferred (“ . . . indem dasselbe zweimal gesagt wird, entsteht eine Breite und damit auch eine Sicherheit der Erzählung, die allen Geschichtsschreibungen zu wünschen wäre”, 12).