The Acts of the Apostles

Overview

Acts is about seventy pages and it is the second half of a two-volume work. It opens by addressing Theophilus and referring back to the former treatise, which is the Gospel of Luke, and it shares that book’s vocabulary, its interests and its habit of putting the poor, women and outsiders in the foreground. Read alone it is a good story; read as designed it completes an argument.

The full title, the Acts of the Apostles, is misleading. Most of the twelve are named once and never mentioned again. The book has two protagonists, Peter for the first twelve chapters and Paul for the last sixteen, and the transition is deliberate.

One feature to notice early. In chapter 16 the narration switches without explanation from they to we, and it does this in four passages, all of them on journeys by sea. Either the author was present, or he is using someone’s travel diary, or the first person is a convention of ancient sea narrative. The question bears on how much of the book is eyewitness and has been argued for two centuries.

The other thing to hold in mind is that we can check Acts against Paul’s letters, and the two do not always agree. The number of visits to Jerusalem, the circumstances of the council, and Paul’s own account of his relations with Peter in Galatians all sit awkwardly with Luke’s version, and the differences are where the historical argument lives.

What happens

Jerusalem, chapters 1 to 7. After the ascension the eleven replace Judas by lot, and at Pentecost a sound like wind fills the house, tongues as of fire appear, and the group begins speaking so that a crowd drawn from across the diaspora hears them in its own languages. Peter preaches, and three thousand are added.

The Jerusalem community is described twice as holding everything in common, selling property and distributing according to need. Luke reports this without qualification and also reports what it cost: Ananias and Sapphira sell a field, keep back part of the price, lie about it, and drop dead.

Opposition builds. Peter and John are arrested and released; the apostles are flogged. A dispute arises between Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking members about the daily distribution to widows, and seven are appointed to handle it. One of them, Stephen, is charged with speaking against the temple, gives a long speech reviewing Israel’s history, and is stoned. Luke notes that the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Outward, chapters 8 to 12. Persecution scatters the community, which spreads it. Philip preaches in Samaria and baptises an Ethiopian official on a desert road. Saul, travelling to Damascus with warrants, is struck down by a light and a voice, is blinded, and is healed by a man who has to be persuaded to go anywhere near him.

Then the episode that decides the book’s direction. Peter, on a roof in Joppa, sees a sheet let down with animals in it and is told to kill and eat; he objects that he has never eaten anything unclean, and is told not to call unclean what God has made clean. He then goes to the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and while he is still speaking the Spirit falls on the gentiles present. Peter’s conclusion, that God shows no partiality, is the hinge.

The council, chapter 15. The question becomes formal: must gentile converts be circumcised and keep the law of Moses? Believers from the Pharisee party say yes. Peter reports what happened at Cornelius’ house, Paul and Barnabas report what has happened among gentiles, and James proposes a ruling that gentiles not be burdened beyond four requirements about food and sexual conduct. A letter goes out. This is the decision that made Christianity a separate religion rather than a movement within Judaism.

Paul’s journeys, chapters 13 to 21. Three expeditions through Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece, with a consistent pattern: synagogue first, some converts, opposition, a riot, and a move on. The set pieces are excellent. In Philippi Paul and Silas sing in prison during an earthquake. In Athens Paul speaks at the Areopagus, quoting Greek poets and arguing from an altar to an unknown god, and is heard courteously until he mentions the resurrection of the dead, at which point most of the audience leaves. In Ephesus the silversmiths who make shrines of Artemis start a riot over lost trade. At Corinth the proconsul Gallio throws the case out as an internal religious dispute, a detail that lets historians date Paul’s stay to within a year or two.

Arrest and Rome, chapters 21 to 28. Paul returns to Jerusalem against advice, is nearly lynched in the temple, is rescued by Roman troops, and spends the rest of the book in custody. He is tried before the Sanhedrin, the governors Felix and Festus, and King Agrippa, and each hearing is an occasion for another account of his conversion. Having appealed to Caesar as a citizen, he is shipped to Rome, and Luke gives a long and technically accurate account of a storm and a shipwreck off Malta. The book ends with Paul under house arrest, receiving visitors and preaching openly and without hindrance, and it does not say what happened to him.

How to read it

Read Luke first, or at least know it. Acts assumes it and the two are one work.

Read chapters 10, 11 and 15 as the centre. The admission of gentiles is the decision everything else turns on, and Luke tells it three times because it matters that much.

Read Galatians chapters 1 and 2 alongside Acts 15, and notice the differences. Paul’s own account of the same events is angrier, mentions a confrontation with Peter at Antioch that Acts omits entirely, and counts his Jerusalem visits differently. Neither author is simply lying; working out what each is doing is the historical exercise.

Watch the speeches. There are roughly two dozen, they take up nearly a third of the book, and by the conventions of ancient history they are composed by the author to convey what was appropriate to the occasion. Comparing Peter’s sermons with Paul’s, and both with the Areopagus speech to a pagan audience, shows Luke adapting the message to the hearer.

Notice the political care. Roman officials in Acts are consistently reasonable and repeatedly find no case to answer, which is unlikely to be an accident in a book written after Nero.

Questions it raises

• The Jerusalem community held everything in common. Luke reports it approvingly and it does not last. Was it a model, a phase, or a memory?
• The council frees gentiles from the law and keeps four requirements. On what authority, and why those four?
• Luke tells the Damascus road story three times with variations. What does the repetition do, and what do the differences tell you?
• Where Acts and Paul’s letters disagree, which should be preferred, and on what grounds?
• The Areopagus speech argues from Greek poetry rather than scripture, and mostly fails. Was it the wrong approach or the right one badly received?
• The book ends with Paul alive and under guard, and says nothing about his death, which the author almost certainly knew. Why stop there?