I have already devoted to a post to argue the AFFIRMATIVE side to the debate resolution: “Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable”  (see the post two days ago, and for an entire post devoted to showing a major irrelevancy in the affirmative case, see the one from three days ago).

In this post I will lay out the NEGATIVE case, as well as I can in this amount of space, arguing that Acts is NOT reliable.  Again, I am not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with this argument; I’m giving it as I would in a debate.

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The New Testament book of Acts is not historically reliable.  Before showing that to be the case, I want to make two preliminary remarks, both of them related to the question of what it means for an ostensibly historical account (a narrative of what allegedly happened in the past) to be reliable.

First, when readers today want to know whether the book of Acts is reliable, they mean that they want to know whether the events that it narrates actually happened in the way it describes.  Or not.  Readers are not primarily interested in knowing if he wrote his account the way other authors in his day would have done.  They are mainly interested in knowing whether his narrative happened the way he says it did.

Second, it is indeed important to know whether the author of the account had a solid and accurate knowledge of the laws, customs, and institutions of his day.  If he did not, then obviously he cannot be historically reliable.  But even if he does, that in itself has no bearing on whether the stories he tells actually happened.  An author may well know that in the city of Lystra there was a temple of Zeus outside the city walls; but that has no bearing on whether what he says *happened* in that temple is historically true or not.  The affirmative side wants to argue that the fact that Luke was knowledgeable about the first century and that can easily be conceded.  Of course he did.  He lived in the first century.  Naturally he knows about it.  But that has no relevance to the question of whether the narratives he sets in the first century happened the way he says they did.

There are two major ways to check to see if Luke is historically accurate.  The first is to see if he is internally consistent in his telling of his stories.  If not, then that would show that he is not particularly concerned to get the facts straight.  The second is to compare him with other reliable sources of the time to see if they coincide or not.  As it turns out, a number of things that Luke says about Paul are things that Paul himself talks about, so we can compare the two.  Whenever they talk about the same thing, they are at odds with one another.  Luke does not appear to be historically accurate.

First, internal consistency.  Luke sometimes tells the same story two or even three times.  When he does so, there are striking contradictions, which show, among other things, that Luke is more interested in spinning a good yarn than he is in preserving a historically accurate narrative.  Let me cite two examples.  First, Jesus’ ascension.  In Luke 24 (you can read it for yourself and see) Jesus rises from the dead, on that day meets with his disciples, and then, again that day, he ascends to heaven from the town of Bethany.  But when you read Acts 1, written by the same author, you find that Jesus did not ascend on that day or at that place.  Jesus instead spends forty days with his disciples proving to them that he had been raised from the dead (it’s not clear why he would have to prove it!  Let alone do so for forty days!); and only then — forty days after the resurrection– does he ascend.  And here he ascends not from Bethany but from Jerusalem.  Luke tells the same story twice, and in two radically different ways.  Historical accuracy does not appear to be his major concern.

Second example.  On three occasions Acts narrates the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus, chapters 9, 22, and 26.  Compare them closely to one another, and you find very odd contradictions.   In chapter 9, Paul’s companions hear the voice of Jesus talking to Paul, but they don’t see anyone; in chapter 22 they see the light but don’t hear anything.  Which is it?  In Chapter 9 the companions are left standing while Paul falls to the ground; in chapter 26 they are all knocked to the ground.  Which is it?  In chapters 9 and 22 Paul is told to go to Damascus to be instructed by a man named Ananias about what to do next.  In chapter 26 Paul is not told to go be instructed by Ananias, instead Jesus himself instructs him.  Well, which is it?

All these examples simply show that Luke was far more interested in telling a gripping story than he was in being consistent. His artistic license has seriously undercut his historical accuracy.

But even more noteworthy are the external contradictions with a reliable source: Paul himself.  Whenever Acts relates an incident from Paul’s life that Paul himself discusses, there are striking and irreconcilable differences.   Sometimes these involve small details.  For example, Acts 17 is clear and unambiguous: when Paul traveled to bring the gospel to Athens, he came by himself, without Timothy or any of the other apostles.  But Paul himself is also clear and unambiguous; in 1 Thessalonians 3 we learn that he came to Athens precisely in the company of Timothy, not by himself.  It couldn’t be both.

Sometimes the differences really matter.  When Paul himself talks about his conversion in Galatians 1 he insists that after he had his vision of Jesus he did not – he absolutely and positively did not (he swears to it!) – go to confer with the other apostles in Jerusalem.  Not for years.  And what happens when Paul converts according to Acts 9?  What is the first thing he does after he leaves Damascus?  He makes a beeline to Jerusalem to confer with the other apostles.  In Acts he does precisely what he himself swears in Galatians 1 that he didn’t do.

Even more striking than the contradictions in the itinerary and travels of Paul are the discrepancies in his preaching.  Here I give just one example.  In Acts 17 when Paul is preaching to the pagans of Athens, he tells them that they worship idols out of ignorance.  They simply don’t know any better.  And because of that, God overlooks their mistake; but he now gives them a chance to recognize the truth and worship him alone.  That stands in sharp contrast with the views that Paul himself lays out in his letter to the Romans.  In chapter one Paul states his views of pagan idolatry and false worship, and they are completely contrary to what he allegedly said in Acts 17.  In Romans Paul tells us that pagans worship idols precisely because they DID know that there was only one God who was to be worshiped, and they rejected that knowledge in full consciousness of what they were doing. And because of that God has cast his wrath down upon them.  Well which is it?  Do they commit idolatry out of pure ignorance so God overlooks their mistake?  Or are they fully aware of what they’re doing so God judges them?  Assuming Paul himself knew what his own views were, you would have to say that Acts has misrepresented the very core of his preaching message.

Every time you compare what Acts has to say about Paul with what Paul has to say about himself, you find discrepancies, just as you find discrepancies internally whenever Acts recounts the same event more than once.  As valuable as Acts may be as an interesting story about the first years and decades of the early Christian movement, the reality is that the book of Acts is not historically reliable.