Acts: An Exegetical Commentary : Volume 1: Introduction and 1:1-247

© 2012 by Craig S. Keener

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2012

Ebook corrections 10.23.2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-3621-0

Unless noted otherwise, all translations of Scripture are those of the author.

To Dr. Médine Moussounga Keener, French and history professor, researcher in African and African-American women’s history, and mentor to her students; former refugee in the Congo; my friend of many years; my colleague; and my beloved wife

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

Prolegomenon: Initial Considerations for Reading This Commentary

1. The Focus of This Commentary

2. Academic and Social-Historical Emphasis

3. Limitations of This Work

a. A Broad Sweep

b. Text Criticism

c. Social History and Social Science

d. Modern Secondary Literature

e. Early Reception History

4. The Legitimacy of Social-Historical Inquiry

a. The Connection between Historical and Literary Questions

b. Ancient Approaches

c. The Value of the Ancient Contexts

d. Other Purposes for Historical Inquiry

e. This Commentary’s Sociorhetorical Approach

5. Questions of Historical Reliability

a. The Value of These Questions

b. Historical Probabilities

c. Common Ground for Historiography

6. The Question of Sources

a. Early Jewish Sources

b. Greco-Roman Sources and Archaeology

c. Modern Sources

7. This Commentary’s Genre

a. Fresh Research

b. Utility for Christian Believers

c. Further Research

8. Nomenclature

a. Religious Labels

b. Geographic Labels

Conclusion

1. Writing and Publishing Acts

1. Writing Large Narrative Works

a. Length

b. Drafting the Work

2. Publishing Acts

a. Released in Stages

b. Pliny’s Example

Conclusion

2. Proposed Genres for Acts

1. The Importance of Genre

2. Travel Narrative

3. Biography

a. Nature of Ancient Biography

b. Problems with Biography as the Primary Genre for Acts

c. The Same Genre for Both Volumes?

4. Novel

a. Literary Comparisons

b. Limitations of Such Comparisons

c. Similar Literary Features in Histories

d. Perspectives and Biases in Historiography

e. Historiography, Inference, and Mistakes?

f. More Serious Flaws in the Comparison of Acts to Novels

g. Value and Weaknesses of This Approach

h. Closing Comments on Novels

5. Epics

6. Acts

Conclusion

3. Acts as a Work of Ancient Historiography

1. The Historical-Monograph Thesis

a. The Value of This Proposal

b. Boundaries between Novel and History?

c. Modern versus Ancient Historiography

d. Ancient History as Nonhistory?

2. What Kind of History?

a. Types of History

b. Overlap with Biographic Approaches

c. Acts’ Type of History

Conclusion

4. The Character of Ancient Historiography

1. Concerns for Historical Information

a. Historians’ Concern for Accuracy?

b. Historians and Critical Thinking

c. Polybius’s High Ideal Standard

d. Earlier versus Later Sources

2. Concerns for Rhetorical Presentation

a. Historians and Rhetoric

b. Luke’s History and Rhetoric

c. Expanding and Abridging Accounts

Conclusion

5. Historical Perspectives, Tendenz, and Purpose

1. History and Agendas

a. Political and National Agendas

b. Moral Agendas in Other Genres

c. Historians’ Moral Agendas

d. The Value of Moral Examples

e. The Role of Praise and Blame

f. Historians’ Theology

2. Is Luke’s Tendenz Compatible with True History?

3. Apologetic Historiography

Conclusion

6. Approaching Acts as a Historical Source

1. Evaluating Degrees of Historical Reliability

2. Luke’s Use of Sources

a. Other Historians’ Use of Sources

b. Luke’s Prologue in the Quest for Sources

c. Luke’s Use of Sources

d. Sources in Acts

e. Investigation and Thorough Knowledge (Luke 1:3)

f. Comparison with Josephus

g. Chronology?

h. Omissions

3. Luke-Acts as a Historical Source

a. Plausibility Structures

b. Scholarly Views

c. Evaluating Luke’s Usefulness as an Ancient Historical Writer

4. Examples Where Acts’ Accounts Are Historically Probable

a. Accurate Local Color

b. The Jerusalem Church

c. The Pauline Mission

d. Paul in Roman Custody

e. Perspectives

Conclusions regarding Luke’s Historiography

7. Acts and Paul

1. Luke’s Perspective on Paul

a. Apologetic for Paul

b. Pauline Material in Acts

c. No Physical Description of Paul

2. Scholarly Views

3. What Not to Expect in Comparisons

a. Incomplete Information

b. Different Perspectives

c. Different Emphases

4. Why Not to Privilege Paul against Luke

a. Comparing Other Histories and Letters

b. Limitations of Paul’s Letters

5. Could Luke Have Known Paul’s Letters?

6. Correspondences between Luke and Paul

a. Earlier Lists of Correspondences

b. Pauline Correlations with Acts

i. Paul’s Early Years and Companions

ii. Paul’s Missionary Journeys

iii. Paul’s Collection and Roman Custody

7. Paul’s Theology in Acts

a. Critiquing Vielhauer’s Critique

b. Other Alleged Incompatibilities

Conclusion

8. Speeches in Acts

1. Luke’s Speech Material

a. Elite Rhetoric versus Acts’ Speeches

b. Quantity of Speech Material

c. Kinds of Speeches

d. Purpose and Function of Speeches

e. Some Compositional Issues

i. Settings of Speeches

ii. Speeches and Narrative Devices

iii. Unusual Aspects of Luke’s Speeches

2. Authenticity of the Speeches

a. Historians Creating Speeches

i. Divergent Reports of Speeches in Antiquity

ii. Pseudepigraphic Speech Composition in Other Genres

iii. Historians Composed Speeches

iv. The Ideal of Capturing the Gist

v. Criticisms of Inappropriate Creativity

vi. The Actual Practice of Livy

vii. The Question of Acts

b. Prosopopoeia

c. Preserved Speeches

i. Speakers’ Notes and Manuscripts

ii. Note-Taking by Hearers

(1) Academic Note-Taking

(2) Note-Taking on Speeches

(3) Other Personal Notes

iii. The Potential for Oral Memory

(1) Oral Cultures?

(2) Academic Memory

(3) Sayings Traditions

(4) Oratorical Memory

(5) Ancient Mnemonics in Other Settings

iv. Relevance for Acts?

d. Expanding Speeches

e. Comparing Hellenistic Jewish Speeches

f. Comparing Josephus

i. Skepticism about Josephus’s Approach

ii. Composing Speech without Witnesses

iii. Josephus Not the Standard

3. Unity among the Speeches?

a. Unity and the Authenticity Question

b. Literary Unity of Speeches

i. Reasons for Similarities?

ii. Value of Repetition

c. Unity versus Historical Tradition?

i. Stylistic Unity and Authenticity?

ii. Stylistic Unity in Other Historians

d. The Speeches: Accurate or Invented?

e. Historical Tradition in the Speeches?

i. Semitisms and Primitive Christology

ii. Need for a Balanced Appraisal

iii. Petrinisms, Paulinisms

iv. Weighing Criteria

f. Conclusions regarding Historical Tradition

9. Signs and Historiography

1. The Problem

2. Some Introductory Questions

a. Evidence for Jesus’s Miracles

b. Methodological Questions

3. Ancient Miracle Accounts outside Early Christianity

a. Gentile Greco-Roman Miracle Accounts

i. Healing Sanctuaries

ii. Pagan Miracle Workers

(1) Magical Associations

(2) The Divine Man

(3) Philostratus’s Claims about Apollonius

(4) Jewish Divine Men?

b. Early Jewish Miracle Workers

c. Comparison of Early Christian and Pagan Miracle Accounts

d. Comparison of Early Christian and Jewish Miracle Accounts

e. Parallels and the Authenticity Question

4. Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

a. Ancient Skepticism toward Miracles

i. Polybius’s Critique of Sensationalist Historians

ii. Signs in Critical Historians

iii. Ancient Plausibility Structures

b. Modern Skepticism toward Supernatural Phenomena

i. Our Cultural Limitations

ii. Should We Privilege Our Worldview?

iii. Modern Objections Considered

(1) Some Historic Philosophic Obstacles

(2) The Shift in the Western Worldview

c. Majority World versus Modernist Western Assumptions

i. Many Miracle Claims Today

(1) A Multicultural Approach

(2) Collecting Reports

ii. Majority World Voices

(1) Learning from Other Cultures

(2) Majority World Claims Widespread

(3) Examples in the Majority World

d. Premodern and Earlier Modern Miracle Reports

e. Modern Western Perspectives

i. Supernaturalist Christian Claims in the Twentieth-Century West

ii. Supernaturalist Christian Claims in Recent Decades

f. Proposed Explanations

i. Natural Explanations

ii. Suprahuman Explanations?

5. Approaching Luke’s Miracle Claims

10. Date

1. In the 60s

a. Argument from Acts’ Ending

b. Other Arguments for a Pre-70 Date

c. After Paul, before 70

2. After 70

a. Based on Mark and Luke 21

b. Acts before Luke?

c. Majority Range

d. Soon after 70

3. After 90

4. Second Century

5. The Date of Acts

11. The Author of Luke-Acts

1. Questions about Authorship

2. The Author’s Probable Background

a. Jewish or Gentile Christian?

b. After Jerusalem

3. The Likeliest Author

a. A Companion of Paul

b. Luke the Physician as the Author?

i. Patristic Evidence

ii. Companions in Pauline Literature

c. Physicians and Luke

Excursus: Ancient Physicians

1. Physicians and Their Limitations

a. Medicine and Superstition

b. Sounder Medicine

2. Physicians’ Status and Background

3. Paganism, Judaism, and Physicians

12. Luke’s Audience

1. Of High Status and Educated?

a. Theophilus and Marks of Status

b. Limitations of Such Inferences

c. Status and Surmounting Status

d. Likely Status of Audience

2. Jewish, Gentile, or God-Fearing?

3. Geographical Range of Audience

a. Rome?

b. Corinth or Ephesus

c. Philippi

d. Ancient Writers’ Geographic Assumptions

e. Luke’s Geographic Assumptions

Conclusion

13. The Purpose of Acts

1. Some Proposed Purposes for Acts

2. Salvation History and Mission

a. From Heritage to Mission

b. Model and Apologetic

3. Acts as Apologetic

a. Potential Apologetic Audiences

i. Emphasizing Paul’s Innocence

ii. Radical but Not Subversive

iii. Apologetic Elements

b. A religio licita?

c. Appeals to Roman Toleration

i. Roman Tolerance toward Various Cults

ii. Josephus’s Appeal to Favorable Decrees

iii. Luke’s Appeal to Precedent

d. Arguments from Antiquity

i. Egyptian and Jewish Arguments

ii. Part of Ancient Judaism

e. The Value of Precedents

f. Contextualizing Luke’s Apologetic

Conclusion

14. Israel’s Story

1. Acts and Judaism

a. Anti-Judaism in Acts?

b. Conflict Reports

i. Emphasizing or De-emphasizing Conflict?