Editing Acts of the Apostles (section)

==Composition and setting==
{{Main|Authorship of Luke–Acts}}
===Title, unity of Luke–Acts, authorship and date===
[[File:Papyrus 29 (POxy1597).jpg|thumb|Acts 26:7–8, 20 on [[Papyrus 29]] ({{Circa|AD 250}})<ref name=":0" />|left]]
The name "Acts of the Apostles" was first used by [[Irenaeus]] in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was an existing name for the book or one invented by Irenaeus; it does seem clear that it was not given by the author, as the word ''práxeis'' (deeds, acts) only appears once in the text ([[Acts 19]]:18) and there it refers not to the apostles but to deeds confessed by their followers.{{sfn|Matthews|2011|p=12}}

The Gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work which scholars call [[Luke–Acts]].{{sfn|Burkett|2002|p=195}} Together they account for 27.5% of the [[New Testament]], the largest contribution attributed to a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus and the [[Early Church of Jerusalem|early church]].{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=556}} The author is not named in either volume.{{sfn|Burkett|2002|p=196}} According to Church tradition dating from the 2nd century, the author was [[Luke the Evangelist|Luke]], named as a companion of the [[apostle Paul]] in three of the letters attributed to Paul himself; this view is still sometimes advanced, but "a critical consensus emphasizes the countless contradictions between the account in Acts and the authentic Pauline letters."{{sfn|Theissen|Merz|1998|p=32}} An example can be seen by comparing Acts' accounts of Paul's conversion (Acts 9:1–31, 22:6–21, and 26:9–23) with Paul's own statement that he remained unknown to Christians in Judea after that event (Galatians 1:17–24).{{sfn|Perkins|1998|p=253}} The author "is an admirer of Paul, but does not share Paul's own view of himself as an apostle; his own theology is considerably different from Paul's on key points and does not represent Paul's own views accurately."{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=590}} Many modern scholars have therefore expressed doubt that the author of Luke–Acts was the physician Luke, and critical opinion on the subject was assessed to be roughly evenly divided near the end of the 20th century.<ref name="Brown 1997 267–8">{{cite book |last=Brown |first=Raymond E. |author-link=Raymond E. Brown |url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontone00brow_0/page/267 |title=Introduction to the New Testament |publisher=Anchor Bible |year=1997 |isbn=0-385-24767-2 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontone00brow_0/page/267 267–8]}}</ref> Most scholars maintain that the author of [[Luke-Acts|Luke–Acts]], whether named Luke or not, met Paul.<ref>{{cite book |last=Keener |first=Craig |author-link=Craig Keener |title=Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Volume 1) |publisher=Baker Academic |year=2015 |isbn=978-0801039898 |page=402}}</ref> He was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; this is significant, because more high-brow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business people who made up the early church of Paul and were presumably Luke's audience.{{sfn|Green|1997|p=35}}

The interpretation of the "we" passages as indicative that the writer was a historical eyewitness (whether Luke the evangelist or not), remains the most influential in current biblical studies.<ref>"A glance at recent extended treatments of the "we" passages and commentaries demonstrates that, within biblical scholarship, solutions in the historical eyewitness traditions continue to be the most influential explanations for the first-person plural style in Acts. Of the two latest full-length studies on the "we" passages, for example, one argues that the first-person accounts came from Silas, a companion of Paul but not the author, and the other proposes that first-person narration was Luke's (Paul's companion and the author of Acts) method of communicating his participation in the events narrated.17

17. Jurgen Wehnert, Die Wir-Passegen der Apostelgeschitchte: Ein lukanisches Stilmittel aus judischer Tradition (GTA 40; Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989); Claus-Jurgen Thornton, Der Zeuge des Zeugen: Lukas als Historiker der Paulus reisen (WUNT 56; Tugingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991). See also, Barrett, Acts of the Apostles, and Fitzmyer, Acts of the Apostles.", Campbell, "The "we" passages in the Acts of the Apostles: the narrator as narrative", p. 8 (2007). Society of Biblical Literature.</ref> Objections to this viewpoint include the above claim that Luke–Acts contains differences in theology and historical narrative which are irreconcilable with the authentic letters of [[Paul the Apostle]].<ref>"The principle essay in this regard is P. Vielhauer, 'On the "Paulinism" of Acts', in L.E. Keck and J. L. Martyn (eds.), Studies in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 33–50, who suggests that Luke's presentation of Paul was, on several fronts, a contradiction of Paul's own letters (e.g. attitudes on natural theology, Jewish law, christology, eschatology). This has become the standard position in German scholarship, e.g., Conzelmann, Acts; J. Roloff, Die Apostelgeschichte (NTD; Berlin: Evangelische, 1981) 2–5; Schille, Apostelgeschichte des Lukas, 48–52. This position has been challenged most recently by Porter, "The Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Letters: Some Common Misconceptions', in his Paul of Acts, 187–206. See also I.H. Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leister: InterVarsity Press, 1980) 42–44; E.E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 2nd edn, 1974) 45–47.", Pearson, "Corresponding sense: Paul, dialectic, and Gadamer", Biblical Interpretation Series, p. 101 (2001). Brill.</ref>

The earliest possible date for Luke–Acts is around 62 AD, the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome,<ref>{{Cite book |title=Dating Acts in its Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts |last=Armstrong |first=Karl L. |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-567-69647-2 |pages=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S7EVEAAAQBAJ}}</ref> but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century). If it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles, and also of the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, as some believe, then a date in the early 2nd century is possible.<ref name="Tyson, Joseph B."/>{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=587}}<ref>Gnuse, R. (2002). Vita Apologetica: The Lives of Josephus and Paul in Apologetic Historiography. Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 13(2), 151–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/095182070201300203, Abstract: "This article suggests that the author of Acts may have been inspired by Josephan texts when crafting biographical narratives about Paul."</ref> However, many arguments mediate against this dating, such as the Gospel of John's awareness of the gospel, its independence from the Gospel of Matthew in the two-source hypothesis, and 1 Clement.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Runesson |first=Anders |title=Jesus, New Testament, Christian Origins |date=2021 |publisher=Eerdmans |isbn=9780802868923}}</ref>

===Manuscripts===<!-- This section is linked from [[Biblical canon]] -->
There are two major textual variants of Acts, the [[Western text-type]] and the [[Alexandrian text-type|Alexandrian]]. The oldest complete Alexandrian manuscripts date from the 4th century and the oldest Western ones from the 6th, with fragments and citations going back to the 3rd. Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts.{{sfn|Thompson|2010|p=332}} The majority of scholars prefer the Alexandrian (shorter) text-type over the Western as the more authentic, but this same argument would favour the Western over the Alexandrian for the Gospel of Luke, as in that case the Western version is the shorter.{{sfn|Thompson|2010|p=332}}

===Genre, sources and historicity of Acts===
The title "Acts of the Apostles" (''Praxeis Apostolon'') would seem to identify it with the genre telling of the deeds and achievements of great men (''praxeis''), but it was not the title given by the author.{{sfn|Matthews|2011|p=12}} The anonymous author aligned Luke–Acts to the 'narratives' ({{lang|grc|διήγησις}} {{tlit|grc|diēgēsis}}) which many others had written, and described his own work as an "orderly account" ({{lang|grc|ἀκριβῶς καθεξῆς}}). It lacks exact analogies in Hellenistic or Jewish literature.{{sfn|Aune|1988|p=77}} The author may have taken as his model the works of [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]], who wrote a well-known history of Rome, or the Jewish historian [[Josephus]], author of a [[Antiquities of the Jews|history of the Jews]].{{sfn|Balch|2003|p=1104}} Like them, he anchors his history by dating the birth of the founder (Romulus for Dionysius, Moses for Josephus, Jesus for Luke) and like them he tells how the founder is born from God, taught authoritatively, and appeared to witnesses after death before ascending to heaven.{{sfn|Balch|2003|p=1104}} By and large the sources for Acts can only be guessed at,{{sfn|Bruce|1990|p=40}} but the author would have had access to the [[Septuagint]] (a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures), the [[Gospel of Mark]], and either the hypothetical collection of "sayings of Jesus" called the [[Q source]] or the [[Gospel of Matthew]].{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=577}}{{sfn|Powell|2018|p=113}} He transposed a few incidents from Mark's gospel to the time of the Apostles—for example, the material about "clean" and "unclean" foods in Mark 7 is used in Acts 10, and Mark's account of the accusation that Jesus has attacked the Temple (Mark 14:58) is used in a story about Stephen (Acts 6:14).{{sfn|Witherington|1998|p=8}} There are also points of contacts (meaning suggestive parallels but something less than clear evidence) with [[1 Peter]], the [[Letter to the Hebrews]], and 1 Clement.{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=578}}<ref>Pierson Parker. (1965). The "Former Treatise" and the Date of Acts. Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 84, No. 1 (Mar., 1965), pp. 52–58 (7 pages). "Furthermore, the relative calm of both of Luke's books, and  sparse apocalyptic as compared with Matthew and Mark, sugg the church was out from under duress when Luke wrote. This is cially true of Acts. Some scholars used to put Acts in the second century, but few nowadays would do so. Indeed if Clement of Rom knew the book, as he seems to have done, it will have to be prior to a. d. 96." and "I Clem 2 1 with Acts 20 35; I Clem 5 4 with Acts 12 17; I Clem 18 1 w 13 22; I Clem 41 1 with Acts 23 1; I Clem 42 1–4, 44 2 with Acts 1–8; I Clem with Acts 26 7; I Clem 59 2."</ref> Other sources can only be inferred from internal evidence—the traditional explanation of the three "we" passages, for example, is that they represent eyewitness accounts.{{sfn|Bruce|1990|pp=40–41}} The search for such inferred sources was popular in the 19th century, but by the mid-20th it had largely been abandoned.{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=579}}[[File:ApostleFedorZubov.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|''Ministry of the Apostles'': [[Russian icons|Russian icon]] by [[Fyodor Zubov]], 1660]]Acts was read as a reliable history of the early church well into the post-Reformation era, but by the 17th century biblical scholars began to notice that it was incomplete and tendentious—its picture of a harmonious church is quite at odds with that given by Paul's letters, and it omits important events such as the deaths of both Peter and Paul. The mid-19th-century scholar [[Ferdinand Christian Baur|Ferdinand Baur]] suggested that the author had re-written history to present a united Peter and Paul and advance a single orthodoxy against the [[Marcion]]ites (Marcion was a 2nd-century heretic who wished to cut Christianity off entirely from the Jews); Baur continues to have enormous influence, but today there is less interest in determining the historical accuracy of Acts (although this has never died out) than in understanding the author's theological program.{{sfn|Holladay|2011|p=unpaginated}}

===Audience and authorial intent===
Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lord's supper.{{sfn|Balch|2003|p=1104}} The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large.{{sfn|Green|1995|pp=16–17}} He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to [[Theophilus (biblical)|Theophilus]] ([[Luke 1:3]]; cf. [[Acts 1:1]]), informing him of his intention to provide an "ordered account" of events which will lead his reader to "certainty".{{sfn|Green|1997|p=35}} He did not write in order to provide Theophilus with historical justification—"did it happen?"—but to encourage faith—"what happened, and what does it all mean?"{{sfn|Green|1997|p=36}}

Acts (or Luke–Acts) is intended as a work of "edification", meaning "the empirical demonstration that virtue is superior to vice."{{sfn|Fitzmyer|1998|pp=55–65}}{{sfn|Aune|1988|p=80}} The work also engages with the question of a Christian's proper relationship with the Roman Empire, the civil power of the day: could a Christian obey God and also Caesar? The answer is ambiguous.{{sfn|Pickett|2011|pp=6–7}} The Romans never move against Jesus or his followers unless provoked by the Jews, in the trial scenes the Christian missionaries are always cleared of charges of violating Roman laws, and Acts ends with Paul in Rome proclaiming the Christian message under Roman protection; at the same time, Luke makes clear that the Romans, like all earthly rulers, receive their authority from Satan, while Christ is ruler of the [[kingdom of God]].{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=562}}