The Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles Introduction 1. The Criticism of Acts 2. Historical Writing in Antiquity 3. Kerygma and History in Acts 4. Luke’s Purposes in Writing Acts 5. The Sources of Acts 6. The Narrative of Acts 7. The Speeches in Acts 8. The Structure of Acts 9. Date of Composition 10. Authorship 11. Bibliography 12. Outline “The Acts of the Apostles” is the name given to the second part of a two-volume work traditionally identified as having been written by Luke, a companion of the apostle Paul. Originally the two volumes circulated together as two parts of one complete writing. But during the late first or early second century, the first volume became associated with the Gospels identified with Matthew, Mark, and John, thus forming the fourfold Gospel. Luke’s second volume was left to go its own way. It was at this time, it seems, that the second volume received its present title, with the word “Acts” (praxeis) evidently meant to suggest both movement in the advance of the gospel and heroic exploits by the apostles. The reference to “the Apostles,” however, is somewhat misleading, because the work deals almost exclusively with Peter and Paul and the persons and events associated with their ministries. Acts is the third longest of the NT writings, being about one-tenth shorter than its companion volume Luke (the longest NT book) and almost exactly the length of Matthew. Together Luke-Acts comprises almost 30 percent of the material in the NT, exceeding both the Pauline and the Johannine writings in size. It is said that James Denney, on being asked by a student to recommend a good “Life of Christ,” looked quizzically at the questioner and replied, “Have you read the one by Luke?” [1] The point is apt because too often we favor modern syntheses over primary sources. The issue is heightened when we ask about a “History of the Early Church.” Luke, who in the preface to his Gospel acknowledges the existence of other Gospels, makes no allusion to anything like his Acts. Moreover, in the NT we have only his account of the early church. Indeed, if we did not have Acts, or if Acts were proved basically unreliable, we would know nothing of the earliest days of the Christian movement except for bits of data gathered from the letters of Paul or inferred by looking back from later developments. To attempt a study of early Christianity apart from Acts, therefore, is to proceed mainly ignotum per ignotius (“the unknown [explained] by the still more unknown”), for information about the early church gained from Paul’s letters often lacks an historical context. Cadbury has spoken of “the extraordinary darkness which comes over us as students of history when rather abruptly this guide leaves us with Paul a prisoner in Rome” (Book of Acts, p. 3). And, in fact, there is nothing to replace Acts. If one or two of the four Gospels had been lost, we should be much the poorer; but we should still have the others. Acts, however, stands alone. It is of utmost importance, therefore, to ask some searching questions about Acts. But before asking specific questions, we must know something of how the issues have been treated in the past so that we may learn how to frame our questions in the light of our knowledge today. Therefore what follows first is a brief history of the criticism of Acts during the past 150 years in order to learn what questions ought to be asked and what steps others have taken toward answering them. From that we will move on to consider the nature of historical writing in antiquity and the relation of proclamation to the writing of history in Acts to learn how to frame the questions in a manner appropriate to the material at hand. Then from such a background, the more traditional issues having to do with the purpose or purposes of the writing, its sources, the formulation of its narrative, the composition of its speeches, the form and structure of the work, its date, and its author can be treated with greater precision. 1. The Criticism of Acts Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles during the past century and a half has progressed through various phases, taken various forms, and focused on various issues. In the nineteenth century it was largely dominated by the Tubingen school of German critics and their so-called tendency criticism, based on an Hegelian understanding of the course of early Christian history. In 1831 F.C. Baur proposed that early Christianity developed from a conflict between Peter, who expressed the faith of the earliest believers and was in continuity with Jesus himself, and Paul, who epitomized a later Christian viewpoint, with Acts being a second-century endeavor to work out a synthesis between the original thesis of Peter and the antithesis of Paul. [2] For Baur, the conciliatory nature of Acts clearly indicates that the work is a later synthesis, perhaps written between A.D. 110 and 130, and that the Paul who wrote the Hauptbriefe—i.e., the authentic epistles (Rom, 1 and 2 Cor, Gal)—could not possibly be the same Paul of Acts. According to Baur, in his own letters Paul is the champion of Christian freedom whereas in Acts he is portrayed as compromising by repeatedly yielding to Jewish scruples. Furthermore, Baur argued that a close study of Acts shows that it abounds in the kind of historical errors to be expected of a second-century author trying to impose a fictitious uniformity and tranquillity upon an earlier more turbulent time and that it also contains such errors as an author would make who wrote well after the events occurred. Baur himself wrote no commentary on Acts. But the suggestions in his five monographs and numerous articles about understanding the course of early Christian history were followed (though not uniformly) by such biblical and theological scholars as David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and Albrecht Ritschl. In particular, Eduard Zeller, Baur’s son-in-law and closest disciple, undertook a full-scale investigation of the narrative of Acts, arguing from its conciliatory purpose for the thoroughly tendentious, nonhistorical, and mythical character of the book. [3]Not everyone, however, was enamored with the Tubingen treatment of the NT materials generally and of Acts in particular. W.C. van Manen of Leiden, the leading representative of the so-called Radical Dutch school, criticized Baur for not going far enough in applying his principles, which he believed ultimately negated the authenticity of the entire NT. And Bruno Bauer to some extent echoed this criticism. On the other hand, most scholars came to believe that it was not just F.C. Baur’s application of his principles but his principles of criticism themselves which were ill- founded and ran roughshod over the evidence. By 1914, in fact, when the nineteenth-century world of thought finally came to an end, the vast majority of scholars had rejected his views. Of great significance in bringing about a more positive attitude toward the reliability of Acts during the later part of the nineteenth century were the works of J.B. Lightfoot, Theodore Zahn, William M. Ramsay, and Adolf Harnack—four very different scholars whose work in concert tended to support the historicity of Acts. Lightfoot, in his 1865 commentary on Galatians, objected strongly to Baur’s assertion that a conciliatory purpose in Acts reflects seriously upon the credibility of the account. Lightfoot declared, “Such a purpose is at least as likely to have been entertained by a writer, if the two Apostles were essentially united, as if they were not. The truth or falsehood of the account must be determined on other grounds.” [4] Moreover, both Lightfoot and Zahn, in separate studies of the apostolic fathers, demonstrated that the evidence does not support Baur’s tendency criticism at a point crucial to its reconstruction of early Christianity and one where it can be readily tested—viz., with regard to the origin of the Clementine and Ignatian writings. [5] Such a demonstration was a crushing blow to the Tubingen view of Acts: if an Hegelian understanding could not be supported regarding the Clementine and Ignatian writings, it could not be supported anywhere. In addition, Ramsay’s investigation of historical and geographical details in Acts, [6] coupled with various literary and source-critical studies that culminated in the work of Harnack, [7] tended to confirm in most minds at the turn of the century the basic reliability of Acts. What doubts remained centered around the portrayal of the character and activities of Paul in Acts, for where the Paul of Acts could be compared with the Paul of the Epistles, there seemed to be some serious discrepancies—though Harnack was able to quiet most of the doubts in his day by insisting that the apostle must be understood more broadly than usual. But though there remained this nagging suspicion about the presentation of Paul in Acts, it could not displace the general confidence in Acts engendered by the work of Lightfoot, Zahn, Ramsay, and Harnack. The end of the nineteenth century witnessed a growing concern regarding the question of Luke’s literary dependence. This erupted into a vigorous debate in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Was Luke’s work based on an earlier source or sources (whether written or oral) that can still be identified through various linguistic features and stylistic alterations in the text? Or are we to consider his book a free composition in the manner of certain ancient historians, with the recognizable Semitic flavor of chapters 1-15 being the result of the author’s modeling of his language quarter of the twentieth century.

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