Loading...Acts in a Nutshell
The book of Acts is a truly important book for anyone interested in knowing how Christianity began: it is our only narrative of the spread of the faith in its first thirty years.
Acts is a relatively long book – about the size of its companion volume the Gospel of Luke – and there is a lot going on in it. Have you ever read it all the way through? Do you know much about it? If not, this is the post for you. If so, then try to summarize the major themes and emphases of Acts in one sentence, of fifty words or less.
Here’s how I would do it (today!):
A companion volume to the Gospel of Luke, Acts narrates the miraculous spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome, from Jew to gentile, through the miraculous deeds and inspired preaching of Jesus’ original apostles and the convert Paul, all empowered by the Spirit and in complete harmony with one another.
In this post I’ll unpack this statement and in the next one discuss who wrote the book, when, and why.
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One significant symbolic element stands out as missing from Acts. There is no reference to the “cup of the new covenant” (or any ‘cup’ at all). I haven’t run across any scholarly interpretation of this. Can you shed any light and/or point me to any research that discusses this. Thanks.
I don’t know of any discussion offhand. The discussin tends to focus on the cup in Luke 22:19b-20, which is missing from the oldest and best mss and is probably not original. If so, that’s why it would not be in Acts. (In part because the author of the volumes does not thing that Jesus’ shed blood was an atoning sacrifice for others)
“Even Paul preaches this message in Acts, in contrast to his own letters — especially Romans and Galatians, where he never talks about repenting for sins and being forgiven, but about Jesus’ bloody sacrifice for others..”
What are we to make of this inconsistency? It seems the scholarly consensus is that Acts was written somewhere around 80-90 BCE, i.e. some decades after Paul’s letters. Is it therefore reasonable to assume that Paul’s letters most accurately represent his own theology of atonement, and that where Luke (whoever he was) diverged from this, he was simply imprinting his own theological preferences onto Paul?
Yup, that appears to be the case.
Thanks! 🙂
I assume you meant 80-90 CE. Anyway, I’ve read estimates as late as 125 CE!
Yes, of course, I meant CE 🤦♂️
Bart, what do we know about Timothy that he would come up with things like: 1 Tim. 2:15; 2 Tim 3:16? Given the fact that most Biblical Scholars believe Paul did not write these letter?
Thanks
I’m not sure what you’re asking. You’re right that critical scholars do not think Paul wrote the letters of 1 and 2 Timothy. But Timothy did not either. (They have their names because they are allegedly written *to* Timothy). So knowing something about Timothy would not help explain why the unknown author wrote these verses (or the rest of the books)
Bart, is there any chance at all that “most excellent Theophilus” could refer to Theophilus of Antioch? After all, he was a convert from paganism, and Luke was writing “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”. Perhaps the connection was hushed up, since that would make Luke’s writings so embarrassingly late that he could no longer have been a companion of Paul. Related question: was the identity of “most excellent Theophilus” discussed it all by any of the early church fathers?
No, the dates don’t work; the books can’t be that late. Theophilus was a very common name. I one time ran a computer word search for it from ancient Greek texts of all sorts and printed it out: it was page after page….
Aha, but how many named Theophilus would have been called “most excellent”, such that the author of Luke-Acts would go to such efforts to persuade him?
Theophilus of Antioch became the patriarch in 169, so let’s say he was a rich young Pagan around 140-150. What constrains the final version of Luke from being written that late?
Interesting that T of A wrote a work against the heretic Marcion, who used a version of the gospel of Luke. I read that a number of scholars think canonical Luke was a revision of the Marcion gospel. So let’s say T of A as a young man was reading Marcion, which horrified his orthodox teachers. Not wanting to lose such a promising young convert to heresy, canonical Luke was written to correct his views, put him on an orthodox track. It worked; T of A recanted his earlier Marcionite views. Around the same time, Marcion got excommunicated.
It’s too bad we don’t have the work against Marcion, only Eusebius’ word that it existed in his day and was a “discourse of no small merit”.
What do you think of that, Bart? At least tell me I have a good imagination 🙂
For starters, any Theophilus who was a fictional character. In any event “most excellent” gets used in Acts to refer to Roman officials, but outside of that to all sorts of people who were most excellent. Dude…
“Dude…” I’ll take that as a yes, that I have a good imagination. But you didn’t answer my first question, what constrains a late date for the final version of Luke-Acts? And related, do you think there’s any chance that canonical Luke was a revision of the gospel Marcion used? Seems that a number of scholars think so, seeing simpler earlier traditions in the latter.
Theophilus as a fictional character would seem a peculiar affectation. Yes, “most excellent” gets used in Acts as a token of respect when addressing officials. Addressing Theophilus as such would simply seem to indicate respect on the part of the writer. I don’t think you have refuted my imagination 🙂
Ah, sorry, I didn’t answer that. No, I don’t think Marcion’s Gospel can have appeared until around 140 CE or so. Luke couldn’t not be a revision of it, since it appears to have been known much earlier.
I have one difference from you in what I found to be a very informative blog. You say that Luke alone among the gospels does not speak about the crucifixion as an atoning sacrifice. I find this only to be true of John. For both Mark and Matthew Jesus’ death on the cross revealed him as the Son of God. The only difference between them is that Mark’s centurion realized this by viewing Jesus’ suffering while the centurion in Matthew came to a similar conclusion following all the miracles that followed Jesus’ death.
Jesus does repeatedly talk about dying for others in John, and that’s usually thought to refer to an atoning sacrifice (see John 10:11, 15, 17)
The author of Acts contradicts the Epistles of Paul on fundamental aspects. One being the doctrine of atonement, the other on how the Jerusalem meeting went, on the subject of Gentiles brought to the faith. Acts seems to be mainly about Paul, or at least about how Gentiles came to be Christians, through Paul mostly, and Peter to a lesser but no less fundamental way.
On this ground, can it be hypothesized the author did not in fact know Paul at all?
Do we have solid reasons to believe that Paul’s epistles were known to the author? Does he refer to any?
Is there any reference to Paul writing while in prison? How plausible is this? Are there any outside references to Paul writing letters in the first century?
How are the letters dated? Could they in fact have been written after Acts, and not before as assumed?
Was Paul a Roman citizen or not? Acts claim he is, not his epistles. Why do we doubt Acts on this?
I don’t think he knew Paul at all, and I don’t see any evidence that hte author knew Paul’s letters.
There are good reason for doubing that Acts is right that Paul was a Roman citizen. One is that even though Paul talks about important aspects of his past he never mentions it; it would have certainly provided some cachet to some of his statements if he could have claimed it. Moreover, he talks about obeying the Roman authorities, wihtout mentioning it. In addition, it was not easy to become a citizen, and a Jew of the lower economic classes (Paul worked with his hands and gives no indication he came from a socially prominent family) rarely could have received it. Moreover, maybe most intersting, is that he himself indicates in 2 Cor. 11 that he was three times “beaten by rods.” That was a form of Roman corporal punishment, BUT it was not allowed as a punishment for citizens. Acts, on the other hand, does want to build up the status adn importance of Paul — from the intellectual capital, Tarsus; trained under the greatest rabbi of his day, Gamaliel; on friendly terms with the high priest; and was a Roman citizen. None of these is mentioned by Paul and all would have been very useful fo rhim to mention if they had been true.
BART, is it possible that Polycarp wrote 1st and 2nd Timothy?
I suppose it’s technically possible that most any literate Christian at the time could have written them. Nothing points to Polycarp though.
This may sound silly, but you really nailed the 50-or-less-words encapsulation of Acts! 😂
On a more serious note, and from an anthropological point of view, what I have noticed reading through the years is that experts in certain areas tend to be able to deliver amazingly such short summaries and definitions. It’s fascinating to see how someone that has mastered a particular subject can so eloquently and brilliantly summarize it!
You probably are aware of the word “λακωνικότητα”. It is of course related to ancient Spartans (which dwelled in Lakonia) and their general philosophy of being short, pithy and precise and keeping it real (to put it in modern American terms 😂) in their various interactions. The ability to convey a lot by saying little is a sign of intelligence and wisdom. Your λακωνικότητα speaks volumes of your deep and accurate knowledge!
Thanks.