8. Speeches in Acts

We have noted the importance of rhetoric to historiography; it was in speeches, however, that historians displayed their rhetorical skills most freely. Most students of ancient historiography would agree with F. W. Walbank when he points out that modern historians would not feel comfortable inserting into their historical works “versions of speeches delivered, or reputedly delivered, by historical characters. But this practice is almost universal among ancient historians, who regarded it as an important part of their work.” Of one scholar’s examples of alleged historical inaccuracies in ancient historians, nearly all originated in speeches or from orators rather than in historical narrative.

Once we have classified Acts as a work of ancient historiography, the speeches require special attention because ancient history-writing practice diverges sharply from its modern descendant on this matter. Historians did not typically treat speeches as conservatively as they did narrative, but fleshed them out more fully (and could also compose them, provided they were appropriate to the occasion). Ancients could either adapt existing sources or completely invent speeches, and one cannot predict, simply on the basis of historical genre, which practice characterizes the speeches of a given author or relates to a given speech within an author. This observation raises questions for our study: To what extent has Luke followed this typical historiographic practice of his day? Moreover, in light of other historians’ use of speeches, what is the purpose and function of speeches in Acts?

Despite some overarching rhetorical principles (such as typical forensic arguments in the defense speeches), Luke’s speech material is not as rhetorically sophisticated as we would expect in elite historians. His speeches are much more compact, suiting the one-volume character of his work. Nevertheless, his speeches consume a high proportion of his narrative, befitting works of history (but perhaps more than usual even in histories because, for Luke, proclamation is the narrative’s chief subject and action).

Although categories overlap, the book’s primarily “evangelistic” speeches tend to be deliberative; the book’s later defense speeches are forensic (though even there Paul is not above deliberatively seeking conversion, Acts 26:27–29). Historians could use speeches to interpret the surrounding narrative; Luke undoubtedly uses them to keep the focus on the gospel message that his protagonists are proclaiming throughout his account.

Speeches in histories were rhetorically significant; this would be the case especially in readings for educated audiences. Lectors of histories presumably orally performed speeches (as they also did other parts of the works) with dramatic gestures and intonation appropriate to the content. Rhetorical scholar George Kennedy has argued that the speeches in Acts do not fit classical Greek orations and has suggested that Jewish rhetorical conventions influenced them. But while some sermons (esp. 13:16–41) naturally show parallels with synagogue homilies and the greater (though not exclusive) Semitic penchant for parallelism (cf. the long chiasmus in 2:22–36) is present at places, Diaspora Jewish orators probably used Hellenistic oratorical principles at least outside the synagogues and probably, to some degree, even in their homilies. (For that matter, even very old and traditional Jewish interpretive techniques were analogous to, and probably rooted in, Greek argumentative rules.) Later speeches in Acts, including notably Paul’s defense speeches, do display characteristics indicating familiarity with rhetorical conventions.

Kennedy’s observation that Acts’ speeches differ from those of classical orators is worth noting. Yet one cannot soundly critique these speeches for rhetorical inadequacy, since they are mere summaries of speeches. Clearly, Luke himself expects his audience to understand that these speeches are abridgments (see 2:40; cf. 4:3); orators could be quite long-winded (see, more fully, comment on Acts 24:4), and the audience reactions do not fit the brevity of the speeches Luke provides. Cicero, for example, complained that a first-century B.C.E. law had limited defense speakers in a court to only three hours apiece. Pliny the Younger suggested a positive reception to a seven-hour oration he gave (Ep. 4.16.2). Even the speeches in Thucydides, which are much longer than those of Luke, are “quite compressed,” compared with actual speeches given. In any case, Luke is more interested in his content than in eliciting praise for rhetorically sophisticated speech composition, and even rhetoricians could recognize such divergent purposes. The ancient rhetorical critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus regarded Plato’s writing style, in general, as tasteless (Demosth. 23), particularly because Plato seems proud about his style (Demosth. 25); nevertheless, he regarded Plato as one of the finest writers of philosophy (Demosth. 41).

Seeking to portray what happened with optimum verisimilitude, most historians applied rhetorical principles to compose full speeches for their characters; Luke, however, has provided instead brief overviews of their arguments. The contrast with other ancient historians is stark enough to have been widely noticed and may suggest that Luke did not follow the standard practice of rhetorically fleshing out his tradition. Perhaps because Luke is not writing a multivolume work or primarily seeking to display his rhetorical prowess, he prefers to summarize many samples of the apostolic message rather than include just a few long ones. That much may be missing rhetorically does not mean, however, that we cannot examine the speeches’ structure and arguments in light of rhetorical strategies of the day.

Kennedy suggests that Luke “is a reasonably skilled writer of speeches,” though he regards Paul and the Fourth Gospel as more eloquent. In rhetorical style for his speeches, Luke seeks an effective middle road (if we take into account that their brevity precludes ornateness). No less a rhetorical purist than Dionysius of Halicarnassus advises that speeches whose audience includes both the educated elite and the “ignorant masses” should avoid the extremes of both “the plain and the grand style,” going down the middle (Dion. Hal. Demosth. 15 [LCL]). Whereas sections of Paul’s letters abound with some rhetorical devices (e.g., Rom 5:3–5; 1 Cor 4:8–12; 15:42–44; 2 Cor 6:4–10; Gal 1:8–9; 4:20), the speeches in Acts are generally much plainer (though it is letters that most ancient critics would have expected to be plain). This style may have suited some ancient critics who preferred a plain style without excessive metaphors or unusual words. In normal speech (as opposed, perhaps, to the riddles of an Eastern sage such as Jesus in the Gospel), clarity is preferable to obscurity; certainly Paul’s speeches in Acts are clearer than his letters, though the occasional obscurity of the latter is probably inadvertent (2 Pet 3:16). Length, however, is a primary issue in the speeches in Acts; actual speeches could be hours in length (See comment on Acts 24:3), and Luke does not expect us to regard his speeches as more than summaries. The speeches in Acts are simply too concise for us to expect them to display the sort of eloquence typical of the elite historians’ speeches.

Speeches constitute a large percentage of Acts, larger than expected in most historical works. Estimates of the particular percentage vary greatly, depending on whether one counts only lengthy speeches, all direct discourse, or some amount in between, and whether one counts the narrative contexts. Some estimate that the speeches compose one third of the book, indicating their importance for it. Paul Schubert estimates that Luke’s speeches and their contexts together make up nearly three-quarters of the book. By including their contexts, one simply counts all stories that contain speech material, but as we have noted, this characterization appropriately fits a story about the spread of God’s message, as Schubert emphasizes. Acts must include a significant proportion of material including speeches because proclamation is the focus of his work. Soards gives one of the highest estimates, higher than G. H. R. Horsley’s; this estimate is probably too high from the standpoint of the work’s genre because ancient historians would distinguish sayings and even dialogue from speeches proper.

Whatever the precise parameters for speeches in Acts, the percentage remains high, and many argue that it is higher than in most other historians. Scholars regularly cite Horsley, who provides figures that are many times as high as other ancient historians—twice the amount in Herodotus or Tacitus’s Annals, four times Josephus’s War, eight times Thucydides, and sixteen times Polybius (despite the length of their speeches). Exact figures are disputable, but mainly because they depend on what one counts; in the end, most scholars have concurred with Horsley’s essential point.

What one counts is significant. Thus Aune estimates that “speeches occupy 24 percent of Thucydides, and 25 percent of Acts.” He estimates that half of the Iliad and more than half of the Odyssey (which often surveys past events through the protagonist’s retelling) are direct speech. In Hellenistic histories, speeches made up, on average, “20 to 35 percent of the narrative,” which compares well with the “25 percent” he finds for Acts. But he notes that when “the narrative frameworks” are taken into account, the picture changes: in Acts, in contrast to Thucydides, the speeches together with their contexts may compose “74 percent of the narrative.” Acts’ percentage is high, not so high as to bring its genre into question but merely to reinforce, as Schubert argues, the centrality of preaching in the work. Luke’s work is shorter than multivolume histories, but he includes the same proportion of speeches and a necessarily greater proportion of stories concerning preaching, given his focus.

Scholars propose various reasons that Acts includes so many speeches. Johnson, for example, suggests (probably rightly) that speeches function as a narrative filler in Acts 1–7, where Luke has less information from his sources; they constitute “fully half the narrative to that point.” Others suggest that speeches fill a stylistic concern to break up and move the narrative, and certainly, ancients did alternate the nature of their content to supply variety to their speeches or writings (Dion. Hal. Isaeus 3) and could use speeches to supply variety to their histories (Diod. Sic. 20.2.1). Others suggest that the speeches are simply a historiographic convention to instruct and please the reader.

But by themselves, such individual proposals can be reductionist if viewed as the entire picture. The speeches may fulfill several functions, and different speeches sometimes fulfill different functions. Although different speeches probably do fulfill different functions and elements of several approaches are undoubtedly correct, the overall amount of speech material does suggest an overarching purpose that allows for this distribution. This observation brings us back to the centrality of preaching in Acts.

If, as I will argue concerning Luke’s purpose, Acts provides in part a model for missions, then its speeches may further provide something like apologetic and missionary models for Luke’s audience, as the later speeches in John probably serve for John’s audience. This is not to suggest that Luke would expect others to reproduce his speeches directly; rather, the speeches explore the kinds of responses that could strengthen the spread of the gospel in the Roman world. Although the sayings material in Luke’s Gospel is of a very different kind (sometimes with figures recognizable to Greek as well as traditional Jewish rhetoric, but often discrete sayings rather than speeches), the large amount of speech material in the second volume might also provide a partial parallel to the first. Most important, the quantity of speech material reflects again the centrality of preaching in the story that Luke recounts.

Most ancient rhetoricians formally divided speeches into three categories: forensic (judicial, courtroom), epideictic (ceremonial, containing praise or blame), and deliberative (seeking to persuade someone to adopt a course of action). Some rhetoricians divided speeches differently, but even the dominant tripartite classification was not followed strictly, except perhaps in the practice declamations of the schools. Some speeches fell into none of the three categories. Different genres of speeches required different styles (Dion. Hal. Demosth. 45–46).

To the extent that speeches in Acts and other ancient literature conform to such categories, speeches of significant length in the first part of the book are largely deliberative (7:2–53 combines this purpose with a forensic setting and conclusion), seeking converts; Acts 20:18–35 exhorts especially Christians; and Paul’s later speeches are especially forensic. Naturally forensic elements dominate the speeches in courts (even if a deliberative purpose is included; e.g., 26:29); even Stephen’s speech, which in some sense aims to persuade, seems more intent (in forensic fashion) on answering and then reversing the charges, convicting his accusers (7:51–53).

Yet public speeches could straddle various categories and even shift from one to another in their different parts. Most evangelistic speeches in Acts will be largely deliberative, calling for conversion, but the christological praise in these speeches involves an epideictic element (e.g., Acts 2:22; 3:13–16; 10:36–41). Mixtures thus appear, as in some other ancient speeches.

The most basic outline for speeches (especially of the forensic variety) was (1) prologue, (2) narrative, (3) proof (sometimes further divided into confirmation of one’s view and refutation of the opponent’s), and (4) epilogue. Speeches also commonly included a proposition. Scholars may examine speeches by elite persons in elite histories according to standard principles of ancient rhetoric. Not surprisingly, completed speeches in Acts generally conform to such a basic outline, though often they are interrupted after the narratio, the narrative component that readers of the larger narrative work would seem most readily disposed to appreciate. As is the case with speeches in other historians, Luke’s speeches derive especially from major characters, with a smaller number from minor ones.

Although some professors of rhetoric (who naturally emphasized preparation) held a low opinion of the improvisation entailed in extemporaneous declamation, many hearers on a more popular level appreciated the ability to declaim on short notice, and some preferred this practice to prepared speeches. That preachers regularly preach extemporaneously in Acts (e.g., 2:14; 3:12; 4:8; 14:14–15; 17:19–22; probably 13:16) underlines their dependence on the Spirit (Luke 12:12; 21:15) and would augment the appreciation of Luke’s audience.

Delivery was also important in a speech; thus a later critic complained that Isocrates’s written speeches could not “accommodate inflection, expression or animated delivery” (Dion. Hal. Isoc. 13 [LCL]). Despite Paul’s and some of his hearers’ protestations of his inadequate delivery style (1 Cor 2:3; 2 Cor 10:10; though rhetors sometimes used such statements merely to lower expectations), he appears as a competent rhetorician in Acts (cf., e.g., stretching out his hand in Acts 13:16; 26:1). The problem noted in Paul’s letters was not Paul’s argumentative style but his delivery (2 Cor 10:10); many rhetors despised those whose rhetoric was much stronger in letters (which could depend on forethought) than in person. Apparently, whereas Paul chose to emphasize his weakness in some of his letters (1 Cor 2:1–3; 2 Cor 11:6; Gal 4:13–14), Luke chose to emphasize the side that many of Paul’s other followers saw, the intellectual hero for a moving (true) story.

For modern readers, lengthy discourses interrupt narrative and are tedious; ancient hearers, however, may have been most accustomed to hearing the entire works, narratives included, in oral form. Speeches could fulfill various purposes. Historians could employ speeches, no less than narrative, to entertain as well as to inform, though these purposes are not mutually exclusive. Speeches may have also offered an opportunity for characterization, in which ancient historians were sometimes reticent to engage as explicitly as some historians today. Historians today also believe that ancient historians employed speeches in a way that applied the earlier issues to the issues of the ancient historians’ day.

Speeches could help hold narratives together. Dionysius of Halicarnassus could use speeches to provide continuity to the flow of history. In OT historical works, writers could employ speeches, as Rosner puts it, “to introduce or sum up the theme of a unit or to serve as a transition to the next unit.” Some speeches and prayers in Acts function in the same way (e.g., Acts 4:24–30 puts events in perspective the way that 1 Kgs 8:22–53 does).

Historians also used speeches as interpretive events, which suggests that Luke’s speeches will offer us clues to his theology of history. Speeches in ancient narratives often provided the writer’s clues to the meaning of the historical narrative (or at least a rhetorical display of competing views, each argued eloquently) as well as the writer’s best reconstruction or, when sources were lacking, best guess of what the speaker may have said. (Speeches also could function to show off the writer’s polished rhetoric, but those in Acts are clearly too brief to display an interest in this function.) Thucydides plainly acknowledges that he provides speeches in his narrative at points where he knows that they occurred, and uses them to expound critical issues. Likewise, the invented speeches of the rhetorical historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus shed light on his narratives.

Herodotus offers an example of the freedom with which historians could create speeches; he sometimes provides various accounts of events, but never of speeches, which he composed freely. Thus Cadbury can assert that “the ancient writers and their readers considered the speeches more as editorial and dramatic comment than as historical tradition.” The person to whom a narrative attributes speech is important; some voices (such as divine ones) are more significant than others (Libanius Maxim 1.3). As in Greco-Roman historiography, some Palestinian Jewish haggadic works used the speech of reliable characters to illumine the narrative’s significance; for example, speeches in Jubilees often interpret the events they accompany. Presumably, speeches in narratives often fulfilled this function regardless of the degree to which the narrator possessed a historical tradition regarding the speech’s key content.

Each speech will be addressed in detail at its juncture in the commentary, but suffice it to say here that Luke’s speeches function ideologically (for Luke I would say theologically), as do speeches in most other ancient historical works. If Luke uses speeches as interpretive devices, his speeches emphasize his theology of history as salvation history. This theology includes the history of promise through David climaxing in the fulfillment of Jesus (Acts 13; see the discussion of promise fulfillment in of this introduction) and the current era of the Spirit (2:17–21). It also includes the history of Israel’s rejection of their divinely appointed leaders (7:2–53; 28:25–27), which helps explain Israel’s current failure to embrace Jesus. Luke offers samples of OT interpretation dispersed among various speeches, and not only the “law” (the most widely quoted part of Scripture in ancient Judaism). He addresses the “writings” (cf. Luke 24:44), for example, through Elijah and Elisha (Luke 4:25–27); the Psalms (Acts 2:25–35; 13:33, 35); and overviews of salvation history (with a Mosaic emphasis in 7:19–44 and with a Davidic emphasis in 13:22–23, 34–36; cf. 2:25–34). He closes with quotations from the prophets in 7:49–50 and 13:41, 47 as well as in his final speech in 28:26–27. Such examples flesh out the global citations in other speeches (e.g., 3:18, 24; 26:22).

Many speeches also explain salvation and provide a model for preaching the gospel from various starting points to different groups of people, such as salvation history (as noted) for Israel (2:14–39; 3:12–26; 7:2–53; 13:16–41) and God the Creator for Gentiles (14:15–17; 17:22–31). Since Luke’s central audience probably consists especially of believers in Jesus, these models are relevant, but his Pauline message for believers to watch out for false teachers who exploit the flock could also play a particularly strategic role (20:18–35). Perhaps Luke faced a setting in which false teaching and rejection of Paul (see above) were real threats (as in the Pastorals; see, e.g., 2 Tim 1:15; cf. 1 Tim 1:19–20; 2 Tim 2:17–18; 3:6–8).

Scholars sometimes also note that the speeches in Acts fulfill a special function less shared with other histories, since the focus of Acts’ history is on the expansion of the gospel message. As noted earlier, the speeches themselves are part of the action and convey the substance of the message the spread of which Luke reports. This may be the reason that Christian proclaimers’ speeches in Acts share common themes and interests more than do the speeches in most histories (see the discussion on the unity of the speeches below). Nevertheless, in principle Luke does what other historians do, albeit with a different subject. Though writers used speeches to explain events, the speeches (especially of political and military leaders) were themselves historical events that played a role in history, sometimes as causes of subsequent events.

Although many of Luke’s speeches are deliberative, many (and especially those in forensic settings) serve an apologetic purpose. The speeches thus substantially advance the apologetic aim of the overall work (see the discussion of apologetic in above and below), especially vis-à-vis the Roman administration (esp. Acts 24–26). Even those that ground the Gentile mission in the heritage of Israel can serve an apologetic function with regard to Rome by emphasizing that the Jesus movement is thoroughly Jewish and hence not a disrespectable new cult. Paul’s evangelistic preaching, too, functions apologetically, though often in a manner different from the forensic speeches. It commends apostolic teaching by presenting it in terms of the highest ideals that pagan audiences often respected in worshipers of a supreme deity, including in ethical monotheism. Although Luke goes beyond such attempts to find common ground (14:15; 17:29–31), there can be no question that he does seek to establish this ground (14:17; 17:22–28).

In most narratives that desired even basic respectability, whatever their actual level, speeches included at least some rhetorical techniques. Rhetorical devices in several of Luke’s speeches suggest that Luke was familiar with rhetoric, though his speeches are too brief for him to display it the way most elite historians would. (In some respects, he adds rhetorical skill to Paul as a speaker, but in some other respects, Paul’s letters display more rhetorical techniques than Luke has space to employ, given his focus on the message; see above.) In contrast to most speeches in elite histories, though, Luke does not avail himself of the opportunity to demonstrate his rhetorical prowess. This is one point, at least, where his speeches differ sharply from those in many other extant histories.

Here we will survey questions about the speeches’ settings, the use of narrative devices (specifically Luke’s preference for speeches over extensive dialogue, and the technique of interruption), and some unusual aspects of Luke’s speeches.

Speeches should be appropriate to their settings (Cic. Fam. 9.21.1), a principle that Luke seeks to follow. Although some scholars argue that Acts’ speeches are less related to the circumstances that prompt them than is the case in most historical works, it may be only the continuous emphasis on the gospel message (which Luke undoubtedly found appropriate to a focused, one-volume monograph as well as to his religious purpose) that produces this relative independence. Otherwise, Luke seems “well versed in and quite capable of composing speeches appropriate to the occasion and the audience,” as rhetoricians expected.

Philip Satterthwaite notes, “Classical historiography and epic, in spite of their basically narrative structures, contain many speeches; and the material in the speeches is almost always of especial significance in its context.” This was true of Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, and others. Diodorus of Sicily, indeed, severely criticizes those who compose speeches inappropriately, thus interrupting their audience’s interest (Diod. Sic. 20.1.1) and failing to provide the sort of speech required for a designated setting (20.1.3–4). Plümacher contends that Luke, like the better histories, also uses speeches at major junctures in his narration and in manners relevant to their context. Comparing the use of some evangelistic speeches in Acts with those in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plümacher concludes that Luke follows conventional forms for Hellenistic history (as opposed to biographies or novels).

Luke may have composed and inserted the speeches, as we have them, at a different stage in constructing his work than he did some of their settings. Historians normally composed their rough draft first, apparently adding speeches at the final stage. This practice fits the sequence of narrative composition more generally. Although writers followed their sources more closely in their drafts, they took care to cast their entire work, including all their sources, in their own words at the final stage.

Only works shaped by the author’s own style were compositionally satisfactory. Some writers even collected synonyms so that they could most effectively paraphrase older writers (Fronto Eloq. 3.5). Such compositional practices remained relevant whether or not writers had sources available for speeches. Paraphrasing even revered sayings was standard rhetorical practice, as evidenced by the school exercises in which it features prominently. Such paraphrase provided a degree of rhetorical freedom and, in the case of familiar lines, would prove more aesthetically appealing than verbatim repetition. Sayings were sometimes also redacted in collections, rather than recited verbatim. Thus Phaedrus feels free to adapt Aesop for aesthetic reasons, meanwhile seeking to keep to the spirit of Aesop (Phaedrus 2.prol. 8). (See further discussion below on speech composition and traditions.)

Although occasionally Acts provides opposing speeches (Acts 24:2–21) or something like them (cf. 5:29–39; 15:5–11; 19:24–27, 35–40), it includes no debates (even less than in, e.g., Luke 20:21–39; John 8:12–58). That Acts focuses more on speeches than on dialogue (with some notable exceptions) fits the general Greek and Roman preference in rhetoric. Luke is fond of direct discourse, which better holds attention in narrative than indirect discourse would; thus, although ancient writings used both direct and indirect discourse, the speeches in Acts “are almost entirely in direct discourse.”

The technique of speech interruption in Acts (Acts 2:37, ; 10:44) is not unusual, though it is noteworthy. It appears in other ancient narratives, but we should pause to consider that it probably also occurred frequently in the sort of real-world speech settings that narratives sought to imitate. Interlocutors commonly interrupted speakers with both genuine questions and criticisms, and sometimes as hecklers. The diatribe style with its fictive interlocutors’ objections partly mimics this pattern. In Acts, however, it normally appears at strategic points in the speeches, after a speech has expanded the content of the apostolic message or communicated what is needed to contribute to the narrative’s overall message. This pattern, where it occurs, offers Luke an efficient way to communicate the point of the speech concisely while reproducing the realism of the ancient rhetorical situation.

Although Luke’s speeches, in most respects, parallel those of other Greco-Roman historians of his era, they do exhibit some distinctive features. Soards and Witherington summarize some of these (sometimes adjusting Plümacher’s earlier list). First and perhaps most obviously, the speeches in Acts are much briefer than the usual speeches in ancient histories. They are not, strictly speaking, merely outlines, but Luke’s failure to fill them in more fully may imply that he has engaged in free composition less than some of even the most careful Hellenistic historians, perhaps because he writes for an audience with less elite rhetorical expectations.

Second, they usually defend a single point of view instead of being balanced with counterspeeches offering divergent perspectives. Third, some scholars note that whereas Thucydides uses speeches to explain events, Acts uses them far more often as part of the action. Luke’s speeches may do both, but Luke’s focus on preaching the message about Jesus gives his speeches a role out of proportion to the usual function of speeches in military and even political histories. Soards thinks that the content of Acts’ speeches differs significantly from that of other historians, being less related to the situation that prompts the speech. Not all proposed differences command consensus; in contrast to Plümacher, who allowed for no deliberative and little epideictic rhetoric in Acts, Soards finds these elements (he seems obviously correct with regard to deliberative rhetoric). Further, Soards finds more stylistic differences among speakers than Plümacher allows (again perhaps correctly, though the differences seem relatively minimal and may stem from Luke’s use of prosopopoeia).

We can explain the brevity of most of the speeches and the presence of relatively few counterspeeches partly on the basis of Acts’ short length compared with most of the histories in question; the others are multivolume works. In his speeches Luke also shows less interest in displaying his rhetorical skills than in communicating their consistent message. But the most decisive factor in all the differences Soards cites is Luke’s consistent concern for the apostolic message, a concern that surfaces in most of our earliest Christian writings. This was the same factor earlier noted above as most decisive in the dominance of speech material in the book.

Historians were to focus on features most important to their narrative (Dion. Hal. Thuc. 13–17). For Luke, what is most important is the apostolic witness narrating and explaining the story of Jesus, particularly his resurrection. (See the section below on the unity of Acts’ speeches.)

Because Acts is a historical monograph, modern readers who accept this classification often expect the speeches to be as “historical” (in the modern sense) as the narrative. Ancient historiography, however, employed speeches in a manner different from modern usage; although the event of the speech might be historical, the degree to which the content of a speech conformed to the actual speech delivered on that occasion varied according to the writer, his sources, and the extent to which any accurate memories of a speech existed. We turn, therefore, to one of the more hotly disputed questions in the study of Acts as ancient historiography.

The language of “authenticity,” however, is the language of modern scholarship. For ancients, a speech in keeping with a speaker’s character and with what the speaker was likely to have said on an occasion would be authentic whether any memory of the speaker’s exact words on that occasion were available or not. Even the most conservative historians wrote in a milieu where their audience expected a cohesive narrative fleshed out with action and speeches, constructed as plausibly as possible, rather than much of the sort of modern academic discussions of probabilities of what may have been said or done (often replete today with footnotes). Historians writing for more elite audiences would be evaluated by both how plausible and how rhetorically sensitive their speeches were to both the speakers and situations that they depicted. Especially in view of the divergence from modern practice, the question merits further exploration.

Martin Dibelius established the major contour of the modern debate about the historical authenticity of speeches in Acts by arguing that Luke, like other ancient historians, composed his speeches. Dibelius is correct that ancient historians composed their speeches; whether some of them did this at times partly by developing historical tradition or eyewitness memory where it was available is a separate question addressed in more detail below.

Modern interpreters can better grasp the issues being debated if they recognize that the question of the speeches in Acts is not one of the “reliability” of Acts but of the genre—it is good ancient history, which, though related to its historical successors, is not exactly the same genre as modern history. Thus Henry Cadbury argues that ancient readers were accustomed enough to historians creating speeches that they read them “more as editorial and dramatic comment than as historical tradition.” He further notes, “If, as seems to me at present more likely, they are mainly the evangelist’s own composition, they illustrate, as do the speeches and letters, how the author conforms to the customs of his literary inheritance—customs often quite different from our own.” Some historians may have drawn on actual speeches (and I shall take this practice into further account below), but even in these cases, many emphasized rhetorical appropriateness as a key element in their approach.

In view of this practice, it is not surprising that different historians often gave similar reports of events but widely diverging speeches, while preserving their basic message. The most obvious case is the version of a speech of 48 C.E. that Tacitus, a mainly reliable historian, composed for his Annals, placing it in the mouth of the emperor Claudius; we have the original, and although it addresses the same subject (more, it might be noted, than some commentators allow for the speeches in Acts), Tacitus’s report is his own composition. This may have been Tacitus’s common practice.

Likewise, we possess different versions of the emperor Otho’s final speech (despite agreements in narrative) and Caesar’s speech to his soldiers. Still more tellingly, in terms of what ancient authors expected their audiences to accept, Josephus reports a well-known speech from 1 Maccabees differently from that well-known source and even composed speeches for the same occasion differently in his various works. Josephus is known for his rhetorical embellishment, but he is hardly alone. Cadbury and his colleagues point out:

When Livy follows Polybius for the facts of his narrative he almost regularly makes a change in the occasion and form of his speeches. So Plutarch and Tacitus agree very closely in their account of Otho but give entirely different reports of his last address. Josephus, who has occasion in his parallel works to deal twice with the same situation, puts two different speeches in the mouth of Herod. The speech of Caesar to his soldiers in Dio Cassius is very different from the brief address reported by Caesar himself on the same occasion. When the actual speech had been published the historian usually mentions the fact as a reason for omitting any speech of his own.

Although these differences should not be exaggerated (as noted below), neither should they be underestimated by those who want to claim for Luke a degree of verbal accuracy in his speeches that was not part of his contemporaries’ expectations for the ancient historical genre. One who wishes to ignore principles of the ancient genre may as well ignore that the work was written in Greek or by an author in the first century.

Greek orators regularly composed forensic speeches for their clients, even eliciting critics’ remarks on the most effective ways to help them (e.g., Dion. Hal. Lysias 8). These rhetorical practices were too conventional to raise any ethical questions about “pseudepigraphy” in such cases. Orators could also create fictitious dialogues to address topics, sometimes even between historical characters—for example, between Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander (Dio Chrys. Or. 2). (Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho fits the same format, though it is not impossible that it recalls, albeit not fully accurately, elements of some actual dialogue[s] that Justin had.) One could spice up one’s subject matter by placing it in the literary form of an extensive dialogue (e.g., Cic. Brut. 3.10–96.330; Fin. passim; Plato passim). That fictitious dialogues were a recognized literary form (not a deliberate deception) is clear from the fact that various friends of Cicero wanted their names used as characters in some of his (Cic. Att. 12.12). Although these examples belong to a different genre from historiography, they reflect the sort of rhetorical practices that Greek and Roman historians knew and probably made use of.

Some other kinds of pseudepigraphic works could be produced for a variety of motives, sometimes to invoke authority, sometimes to offer plausible guesses of the sort of work the attributed author would have created, and sometimes simply as a rhetorical exercise. Thus some Jewish writers wrote works in the names of ancient heroes, such as 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. Roman writers sought to distinguish, for example, genuine from spurious plays of Plautus. This is not to mention cases of deliberate deception, that is, forgeries. But speeches in histories were not viewed as forgeries or pseudepigraphic works; they were an expected literary convention.

Sophists practiced creating speeches for earlier Greek heroes. Older Greek works about historical personages employed such conventions widely. Dionysius complains that Plato’s Apology for Socrates, while purporting to be Socrates’s defense speech, “never saw even the threshold of a law-court or an open assembly”; it defies the genre of a true oration (Dion. Hal. Demosth. 23). (It would not therefore meet a historian’s plausibility criterion.) Writers could invent speeches for opposing generals even when preserved historical tradition must have often been slender (e.g., Xen. Cyr. 3.3.43–45), in addition to providing speeches for considering different sides of an argument (5.1.9–12). Speech composition for other narrative genres inevitably affected historiography.

Historians also composed speeches, usually employing appropriate rules of rhetoric (see comment on above). Lacking verbatim reports (and varying in the information available), historians offered speeches with as much verisimilitude for the speaker and occasion as possible. Ancient authors wished to accommodate the expectations of their audiences, who appreciated speeches as a way to enliven narratives. Most scholars (albeit with a significant dissenting minority) argue that Luke, as historian, would have followed this same practice.

Some dissent, contending that NT scholars argue for such free composition by historians only to absolve Luke from the charge of dishonesty. Thus Gerd Lüdemann objects, “Historians of ancient Greece and Rome did not consider themselves free to weave the speeches of important figures (the only kind they would report) out of the thread of their own imaginations.” But the sources that Lüdemann cites are limited, and it is difficult to imagine that the long speeches of most historians reflect pure memory (far more difficult even than imagining the same for Luke’s shorter reports). Although the extent to which they push their claim is problematic, Lüdemann and others are probably right to an extent: historians undoubtedly used traditions and sources where they had them available (often giving the substance of speeches given on particular occasions or at least thought to have been so given).

Claiming that historians composed full speeches does not normally mean that speeches did not occur on such occasions or even that the historians invented the speech’s subject matter when the actual subject was known or earlier reported differently. Historians sought plausible verisimilitude, which often meant drawing on what was in fact known of the occasion, the subject, and the speaker’s style. Where they lacked material, however, plausible rhetorical constructions sufficed, and where they possessed it, they augmented and adjusted it according to rhetorical convention and plausibility.

Kennedy notes that as early as Herodotus, speeches (or a debate) could be created “to summarize in a vivid way the characteristics of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy as he understood them.” Ancient writers were aware of this practice. Thus Dionysius comments on a speech “which Herodotus puts into the mouth of Xerxes” (Dion. Hal. Demosth. 41 [LCL]). Herodotus seems to have reacted against the narrower approach of Thucydides; Polybius, in turn, reacted against the free compositional approach of Herodotus and his successors, though this approach remained common.

Nor did the practice of speech composition in histories end with the early Greeks. For example, Quintus Curtius in the first century offers speeches for the Persians that no one would expect to reproduce what was said on such occasions; they might be plausible or even reflect his sources, but the likelihood of their reflecting authentic eyewitness tradition is minimal. Just a few decades after Luke, Pliny, whose standards for historical accuracy are normally high, praises an orator-historian who provides his characters speeches as excellent as his own, though more concisely (Ep. 1.16.4). Certainly, as late as Herodian, historians continued to invent speeches, though insisting that they should be historically plausible. Diodorus Siculus opines that there is nothing wrong with historians seeking to display their rhetorical skills in speeches, composing “public discourses and speeches for ambassadors, likewise orations of praise and blame and the like; for by recognizing the classification of literary types and by elaborating each of the two by itself, they might reasonably expect to gain a reputation in both fields of activity” (Diod. Sic. 20.1.2 [LCL]). Though criticizing those who provide speeches inappropriate to their setting (20.1.1–4), he refuses to ban speeches from historical works completely, “since history needs to be adorned with variety . . . so that, whenever the situation requires either a public address from an ambassador or a statesman, or some such thing from the other characters, whoever does not boldly enter the contest of words would himself be blameworthy” (20.2.1 [LCL]).

As Aune notes, even those who published inscriptions of decrees failed to copy exactly the wording “of the originals . . . deposited in archives” but were satisfied to communicate the “gist” of those decrees. “If public inscriptions of official documents conveyed only the general substance,” Aune asks, “why should historians aim at slavish imitation?” As suggested above (sect. 2.a), some scholars cite as an example Claudius’s rambling speech preserved as a transcript in an inscription (ILS 212 = ARS 175) versus the concise and rhetorically sensible version in Tacitus (Ann. 11.23–25, esp. 11.24). Edwin Judge suggests that Tacitus “probably never saw the original, but developed his own version from an official digest of it, or from a summary in one of his predecessors.”

This example reveals that even Tacitus composed speeches for his history. On the other hand, it also shows that he did so on the basis of a historical core of what Claudius said on the occasion (see discussion, in the next subsection, of capturing the gist). As Conrad Gempf is careful to point out, Tacitus gives “the general sense” and even retains elements of Claudius’s style, while greatly condensing. Certainly, Tacitus made no effort to deceive readers into thinking that he provided verbatim reports; everyone knew that historians composed speeches based on a basic knowledge, when available, of what was said. Tacitus’s contemporaries also knew him as a particularly outstanding orator (Pliny Ep. 2.11.17); his historical composition dared not waste his rhetorical talents without risking compromise to his reputation.

Balch argues that some historians felt that their readers would be dissatisfied with an epitome containing almost exclusively deeds (e.g., 2 Maccabees or Mark); they wanted to hear the reason for events, and so the historians provided narratives more fully, hence including speeches that explained events. He concludes that “historians, including Luke, composed speeches that were not verbatim reports, but that like adverbs modify the verbal events of the narrative.” The speeches would thus be idealizations, even when based on earlier traditions about the apostolic message.

Historians regularly composed or “freely adapted” the speeches in their sources, but at least those who most valued the known models of Thucydides and Polybius tried to base their speeches on historical ones. That is, the ideal was to capture the gist but in their own words, wherever sufficient information to supply the gist was available. Ancients might evaluate some historical speeches only for appropriateness, but they would expect more substance if, for example, the author was present or heard them from those who were. Ancient historians’ freedom in composition did not require them to fabricate new speech events; often, as we shall observe below, they simply adapted what was available. As Aune notes, to omit “discourse material in their sources” was “usually unthinkable”; yet transcribing them without modification was “almost unthinkable” (for rhetorical reasons), and so most changed the language of what they found in their sources. Gist was not objectionable; ancients relied on their memory to retrieve and arrange information because the standard for accuracy was the “gist.” Memory often preserves the gist of matters even when details remain more obscure or inaccurate.

Scholars today often debate the specific meaning of Thucyd. 1.22.1, which provides that author’s rationale for using speeches. Classicists themselves have interpreted his statement in various ways, but the majority read Thucydides as providing to speakers what it was expected that they should have said, “sometimes at least on the basis of what Thucydides or his sources remembered.” Thus he might recount a speech of Pericles that he himself heard, with the final product, however, being Thucydidean as well as Periclean. Political speeches were rarely published until after Thucydides’s day, and so he often had to depend on τὰ δέοντα, what fit the situations he depicted. That is, he provided the most plausible historical reconstruction he could, instead of offering little or no reconstruction (an approach that, for an ancient audience, would have itself seemed a violation of the narrative’s plausibility).

But on what basis could Thucydides define and construct that which would be historically plausible? No one questions that the speeches are written in Thucydides’s own style, but are they purely imaginative? Some scholars take ἡ ξυμίᾶσα γνώμη as the speech’s “general intention” in the sense that Thucydides reconstructed the speeches solely on the basis of knowing the speech’s situation and the speaker’s political inclinations. But another phrase of Thucydides in this passage might warn against such a free understanding of that phrase: τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων, “what in truth was said.” Thucydides acknowledges that speeches’ hearers would not recall them verbatim, so that he can merely give the general purport and reconstruct from the situation. Yet it is also clear that, where possible, he worked from genuine sources, seeking to balance available truth with rhetorical suitability. One may doubt the precision of a number of his sources, but his words suggest the approach that he considered the ideal.

In 1.22.1–2 Thucydides notes that he heard some speeches and that he had informants; that he cannot remember them in the same way that he recalls events; and that he has sought to represent plausibly the sorts of things the speakers would have said. He also claims (1.22.2) that this approach in the speeches contrasts with his more painstaking investigation of all the events he reports. Beyond such general contours, the precise sense of Thucydides’s wording is probably more debatable on several points than either side in the argument has been willing to acknowledge. Thucydides seems to be suggesting that he simply did the best he could, on the basis of whatever information he possessed plus historical imagination, to construct the speech close to the way it should have been spoken.

Thucydides’s plan regarding speeches provided an important model for his successors, both Greek and Roman. Nevertheless, Thucydides’s immediate successors often failed to share his interest in τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων. Where did the average historian exercise the greatest freedom to develop his sources regarding speeches? C. W. Fornara, a specialist in Greco-Roman historiography, remarks: “The rhetorical formulations, the sometimes profound and sometimes elegant analyses, belong to the historians; so does the organization of the material in accordance with rhetorical principle. Everything was heightened, made precise, given point and relevance from foreknowledge of events.” Others allow that historians could invent speeches to enliven the narrative, but also contend that historians such as Thucydides sometimes had a précis containing recollections of a speech.

In general, the more distant in time the reported speech, the greater the necessity for the historian’s imagination to reconstruct it. Sometimes historians must have even merely inferred, rather than known, that a speech was delivered at a given event. Yet this was not always the case. Even if Fornara exaggerates the frequency with which the ideal was attained (as some other scholars suggest, probably rightly), at least his arguments warn against hastily dismissing the possibility of historians’ composed speeches ever preserving the gist of historical speeches: “But these imperfections in the practice of the historians should not detract from the basic integrity of their approach, even if that approach substantially differs from our own, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that we possess the core of the speeches as well as the record of the deeds of the Greeks from (at least) the end of the sixth to the first century B.C.” A reasonable guess of the sort of speech given on an occasion, though highlighting the author’s interests, would not be welcome in a modern history textbook. That the subject and perspectives of such speeches were, to most historians’ knowledge, often based on as much knowledge as possible of the speeches’ historical substance (or at least their primary agenda) brings us closer to modern historical interests but still differs from the way we write history. Ancient history was in this respect a somewhat different genre from its modern successor, with somewhat different rules.

These caveats do not fully resolve the nature of historical tradition in speeches from one historian to the next. Although different historians recording the same events followed rhetorical convention in composing different speeches and, further, employed speeches to entertain, Cadbury and others note that the more serious historians still set limits and preserved, where available, the basic message of the speeches. Normally, Greek historians, while filling out the contents of speeches, did not invent the actual events or occasions of the speeches. Such events were historical events no less than battles, even if one could merely guess what was spoken on many occasions of the distant past.

Thus the better Greek historians would include the substance of what was spoken if this were available to them (this much, at least, seems implied in Thucyd. 1.22.1). The range of speech-writing practices among ancient historians (from the general fidelity of Thucydides and Polybius to the often-blatant fabrications of Josephus) makes it impossible to predict a priori Luke’s accuracy purely on the basis of any historiographic “convention” of speech writing.

Despite some differences between ancient and modern history, ancient historians were capable of asking the same critical questions that we are asking today. Dionysius grants that Thucydides was often present, participating in what he reports (Dion. Hal. Thuc. 6). But from what Thucydides himself says, he was an exile in Thrace during a later part of his book and could not have heard a speech reported elsewhere (Thuc. 41). We could respond that Thucydides maintained contact with his friends and hence would have had access to the basic contents of the speech, but Dionysius is more skeptical. Arguing that we must evaluate whether the dialogue he composed fits the known facts and character of the delegates, he doubts whether Thucydides lived up to his introductory promise in Thucyd. 1.22 to stick to the basic point of what was said in some parts of the speech (Dion. Hal. Thuc. 41).

Likewise, Polybius proves quite critical, at least in the standards he uses to evaluate his apparent nemesis, Timaeus. (That Polybius expects his readers to be outraged just as he is probably implies the normal historiographic expectations of his day, at least in his circles.) He complains that Timaeus neither quotes speakers nor provides their general sense but supplies what he thinks they should have said, using their speeches as an occasion to display his rhetorical skills (Polyb. 12.25a.4–5). This approach, Polybius insists, violates the particular purpose of writing history, which includes discovering the words originally spoken (12.25b.1); by introducing his own rhetorical practice rather than dealing with the genuine speeches, Timaeus “destroys the peculiar virtue of history” (12.25b.4 [LCL]). As a crowning blow, Polybius complains that on top of all this, Timaeus is rhetorically inept as well (12.25k.8; 12.26.9)!

We should not press Polybius’s demand for accurate speeches in any modern verbatim sense. Even Polybius cannot avoid introducing some generals’ speeches—for example, supplying both those of Roman officers and those of the Carthaginian Hannibal. He could well have had access to, and passed on the substance of, the Roman speeches (and possibly even some Carthaginian ones), but he reports them as direct speech, not merely the summaries that, at best, he had.

Some historical writers during the empire may reveal careful memory of speech material. Seneca the Elder reports that he remembered details of speeches from his school days (Controv. passim), though his memory was exceptional. Indeed, sometimes a writer would provide only the purport of a known speech, refraining from trying to reproduce it because his source could recall only the gist (Eunapius Lives 484). We must revisit the question of memory and speeches further below (sect. 2.c).

Ancient historiographic theory allowed a writer to put a speech in his own words, provided he did not invent the content. Thus, for example, some scholars argue that Arrian abbreviated and adapted to his own words the speeches in his sources but faithfully followed their gist. In practice, most historians seemed to recognize that their fellow historians did retain the essential substance of speeches that they found in their sources. Granted, this does not tell us how reliable their sources were, but it suggests that there was a conservative as well as a creative rhetorical element in historians’ treatment of speeches when they had sources for these speeches.

A critical test case for this principle is Livy; as a rhetorical historian, he, if anyone, would adapt speeches. Yet where Livy covers the same speeches as Polybius, he retains the gist, despite “liberties with content and staging,” instead of inventing something new; that is, he is basically reliable regarding the gist. Some of his minor alterations of the history may reflect other prior sources; in any event, “he substantially reproduced the source-content of the speeches he inherited from others.” As one expert points out, “Livy treats the speeches in his sources with some respect, reproducing the content while changing the form, and almost always adding to the length of the speech considerably, without thereby adding fictitious topics, and what additions are there can often be chalked up to the attempt to give a convincing character study.” Indeed, another historian observes that even Pompeius Trogus, with the worst excesses, avoids “free fiction.”

Speech writing became problematic only when Roman historians tried to write “ancient” history for which they no longer had oral traditions (e.g., writing during the empire about “the monarchy and the early republic”). Even regarding ancient speeches, historians often resorted to older historians’ reports of such speeches (whatever the source of these older reports). These sources continued to circulate during the empire, and some speakers used them for oratorical practice (Dio Chrys. Or. 13.14–15; 18.18–19). Further, when historians invented these ancient speeches, comparing other sources indicates that they at least sometimes reflected kernels of historical information.

How does Luke fare in these terms? Most scholars regard historians such as Thucydides as much more careful than Livy (who had a much longer period of history to cover and more compelling literary interests). But as Fitzmyer observes, “Thucydides and Luke,” unlike Livy, “were recording events that were more or less of their own times.” One would expect them more often to have access to, and provide the nonverbatim substance of, the speeches they report. (And even Livy, as we have observed, has a conservative element.) It is true that Josephus writes about events close to his own time as well, but it is difficult to question that Luke shows far more rhetorical restraint (or modesty about his more limited skills) in his summary speeches than does Josephus.

To claim that historians had wide latitude in speech composition is not to claim that each of them exploited this latitude to the same degree as others or equally in all of their speeches; hence it does not establish the degree of freedom that Luke took in all his speeches. It merely establishes the outer limits of freedom that Luke could have pressed while remaining a writer of ancient historiography. The parameters on the other side—namely, how faithfully Luke might have reported speech material—must be explored by other means (here the historian may investigate Luke’s access to such information, correspondence with extrinsic data, etc.). Unified style is a less useful criterion, since it establishes only that the material is Lukan, not that it cannot be Luke’s selection and adaptation of prior material from his own perspective.

A major factor in historians’ creativity in speeches was the display of rhetorical prowess in constructing entire speeches intended to plausibly represent what could best be imagined to have been said on an occasion. Although Luke presumably does follow this general approach of plausible construction (and it is virtually certain that he does so in Acts 25:14–22), he provides mere summaries, not entire speeches; in contrast to most models under discussion, he shows no interest in rhetorical expansion. Thus Charles Talbert, after pointing out the compositional practices of ancient historians noted above, comments, “The brief speeches in Acts . . . bear no resemblance to the rhetorical compositions of Josephus,” which might allow “that some or all of the speeches in Acts are a digest or summary of what was actually said.”

Luke certainly is willing to report the gist rather than strive for (or even wish to appear to be striving for) a verbatim report, as is evident from occasions where he repeats a report in varied words (e.g., compare Luke 24:47–49 with Acts 1:4–8; Acts 10:4–6 with 31–32; and 10:14 with 11:8). Ancients valued literary variation. The frequently recurring themes in Luke’s speeches (see discussion in sect. 3 below) also suggest that Luke’s own theological interests help shape how he reports these speeches.

Still, one might hope that Luke, given his sources (e.g., Luke 1:1–3; Acts 16:10), had better access to the basic gist of what was spoken than did those who wrote about events long past. Luke produces a more monolithic tract than most historians writing larger works with literary ambitions, but he also exhibits less desire to display his own rhetorical skill and preserves much shorter speeches. Luke’s speeches are usually rhetorically weaker than some other parts of his work, and whereas other historians often lengthened their “gist,” Luke’s concise speeches may summarize rather than expand (cf. Acts 2:40).

These factors support the possibility that historical tradition stands behind many of his speeches. That Luke writes about recent, rather than distant, events allows him to take the approach of historians such as a Thucydides more readily than that of a Livy, as I note elsewhere. Certainly, where Luke adapts Jesus’s speech in Mark (e.g., Mark 13:5–37 in Luke 21:8–36), his adaptations leave in place the essential substance of a speech (even if Luke’s perspective is considerably more historicized). This comparison, admittedly, should not be pressed too far: in Acts, Luke is usually not dealing with the sayings of the Lord (apt to be most carefully preserved and transmitted) and probably not with written sources. Moreover, for the Jerusalem church, Luke may have better information about the kind of preaching that flourished there than about the points of particular speeches on the occasions he reports; the ancient historian’s task of verisimilitude, even at its best, required no more than that he construct such speeches as plausibly as possible from his tradition.

As already noted, Acts on occasion may report conversations to which Luke and his sources would not likely have been privy (Acts 25:14–22). In such cases one would not be surprised if Luke composed the account according to what he deemed probable rather than according to an oral or written source; in so doing, he would simply have been following the procedure expected for ancient historians. But in many more cases, especially for Pauline speeches, Luke could have had genuine sources, often eyewitness reports or summaries (for Luke’s or his source’s possible access to Paul, see , , below, and esp. comment on Acts 16:10).

Dibelius was right that historians neither expected nor desired verbatim quotation of speeches, but we should also take very seriously the criticism that Dibelius’s late dating of Acts caused “him to underestimate an ancient historian’s desire to include, so far as possible, in the speeches recorded the ‘general sense’ of what was said or would have been said on each occasion, so far as Luke or his informants remembered.” The length of most historians’ speeches, one factor that leads us to suppose most historians’ creativity, is much greater than that of the speeches in Acts.

Thus Luke may have developed historical traditions about the topics of speeches on given occasions with other traditions about the way these speakers or parts of the church, in general, taught (see discussion of prosopopoeia below). He undoubtedly developed this material further to produce coherent speeches, but given his speeches’ unusual brevity, he apparently developed his material less thoroughly than did most other historians.

Scholars have found primitive Christology in some of the speeches (e.g., “God appointed Jesus as Christ”; “servant”; “holy one”). Although not all these scholars’ arguments are fully persuasive, those features they identify that may genuinely reflect primitive Christology need not reflect tradition on the precise words used on a particular occasion but might fit the practice of προσωίοίοιία (prosopopoeia) or, by a number of ancient rhetoricians’ narrower and more technical definitions, ἠθοίοιία (ethopoeia). Most rhetoricians applied the term προσωίοίοιία to any kind of personification whereby one provides speech for whatever or whoever is clearly not speaking (e.g., a country or one’s ancestors). Those using this device nearly always identified the speaker.

As noted below, where no report of a specific speech’s contents was available, historians might compose what they thought the speaker would have said, aiming for verisimilitude; this practice resembled composing speeches “in character.” Lucian advised using prosopopoeia by letting the speaker’s language fit the person and the subject, though he permitted rhetors the freedom to use the opportunity to display their own eloquence; this was, Lucian expected, the procedure for a true historian.

Writing speeches in character for various characters of the past was a common rhetorical exercise (Theon Progymn. 8), and it could include what some other rhetoricians called “ethopoeia,” speaking in the ēthos, or character, of a person. One might, for example, write about “What Words Niobe Might Say When Her Children Lie Dead,” or even a (mock) defense for Phaleris, who sent Delphi a tainted gift. One should retain what suited the person and the situation—for example, what fit an older versus a younger man or a rejoicing person versus a mourning one. Dio Chrysostom commonly invented “appropriate” speeches for characters; for example, he creates a fictitious dialogue between Alexander the Great and Diogenes the Cynic as a way to illustrate a theme (Dio Chrys. Or. 4). Some created fictitious dialogues to emulate the styles of particular classes of people. Such created speech also appears in first-century Stoic diatribe, and even the early Stoic philosopher Chrysippus employed this technique (προσωίοίοιεῖν, Fronto Eloq. 1.15). Cicero, for example, demonstrates his command of various philosophic systems by supplying suitable lines for each of the speakers in De finibus and other dialogues.

Ancient rhetorical critics were sensitive to matters of individual style and did practice stylistic criticism; thus, for example, though none of the elements of Demosthenes’s style are exclusive to him, they are characteristic of him and cumulatively help distinguish him from others (Dion. Hal. Demosth. 50). Many also emphasized realism in speeches; thus Pseudo-Longinus criticizes writers of tragedies who employ bombast in speeches even though they do not sound like real speeches (Longin. Subl. 3.1).

Appropriateness in composition was important. Rhetors should be sensitive to local color and values (Quint. Inst. 3.7.24) and should address different kinds of assemblies (e.g., forensic speech for juries, usually deliberative for political assemblies, and epideictic for festivals) differently (Dion. Hal. Lysias 9). Greek historians frequently used archaizing language when representing the speech of ancients, and so Luke might have deliberately utilized earlier christological titles in some of the early speeches.

This archaizing would suggest, however, that if Luke did not have access to the exact words spoken on those occasions, he was, at the least, aware of the christological language believed to be employed in earlier times and how it differed from current dominant usage. Socrates’s successors differed in their interpretation of him, and their reports of his specific words differ substantially; but all reproduced his lofty style (Xen. Apol. 1) and often shared common topics. This practice could suggest that even where a historian like Luke may lack historical tradition about the wording of a particular speech, he could make use of historical tradition about the kinds of speech typically used by the speaker or those like him on such occasions, and hence offers the most reasonable suggestion about a particular speech (for which tradition may have supplied the setting and thrust). Such factors could prove helpful for historians’ hopes to create “plausible” history.

Jervell argues that tradition would have preserved the teaching of the apostles as well as that of Jesus. He notes that Paul’s letters present as already known to the churches the preaching of apostles and Jerusalem leaders (see, e.g., 1 Cor 1:12; 9:5; 15:5, 7; Gal 1:18–19; 2:7–14); the churches also remembered Paul’s ministry and preaching (e.g., 1 Thess 1:5–9).

Still, although these arguments suggest that the church preserved the apostles’ message, they fail to demonstrate that it preserved their individual speeches. The apostolic message was foundational (Eph 2:20; 3:5), but it is doubtful that Christians had the same interest in preserving their sayings, apart from their witness to the gospel tradition, as in preserving those of their Lord. Even Jesus’s sayings can appear in different settings in different Gospels, fitting biographers’ freedom to rearrange their material, which was not typically preserved as discrete speeches. Precisely because Jesus and the apostles spoke so much, recalling particular speeches out of the many that were surely offered probably happened only for particularly dramatic occasions.

Although such arguments for preserving early apostles’ individual speeches are thus not compelling, neither are arguments that all such speeches would have been forgotten. If modern Westerners can recall the major thrust of some very significant or famous speeches over the course of several decades, it is all the more likely that ancient hearers, more familiar with oral traditioning, could have done so. Moreover, the author of the “we” source (which I argue was Luke himself) was near Paul during later speeches and could have had access, as some scholars have argued, to written notes and even court summaries. Thus, while some speeches in Acts may derive from Luke’s inferences (again, most obviously, Acts 25:14–22), others may reflect genuine summaries of what was said on the occasions in question.

That those who held particular speeches to be important could preserve them is clear from the example of Dio Chrysostom, many of whose speeches were preserved, sometimes even with apparent speaker feedback to audience responses. Dio himself sometimes repeated to other hearers speeches that he gave before the emperor (Or. 57.10–12), though he would likely adapt some of the wording for a new audience. Speeches themselves were, in such perspectives, events meriting recital. How common were such practices, and how relevant would they be to the situation in Acts?

Most speeches depicted as given in Acts were extemporaneous rather than prepared (cf. Luke 12:11–12; 21:14), and given by preachers rather than professional orators, so that speakers’ notes or manuscripts are unlikely. Nevertheless, in the interest of thoroughness, we should examine the practice of notes on speeches, which may be relevant for some of the court speeches later in Acts.

Professional orators usually wrote out and published their speeches after delivery, in the process often improving on their original product. Some, after improving their speeches, might offer them at public readings (Pliny Ep. 7.17.5), even though readings lost some of the dynamic of genuine oratory (2.19.2, 4). They might also condense to summaries less interesting parts of their oral speeches. At other times, the improved written speech proved considerably more elaborate than its delivered form. Such written versions could be sent to friends or openly published; Pliny corresponds with those who read his speeches. Of course, speakers’ polished sermons published after delivery would not be relevant to the speeches in Acts, none of which were delivered by professional rhetoricians. Speakers’ notes from before delivery, however, might be a different matter.

Speakers often used written speeches or notes. For example, even though Cassius Severus was known especially for his improvisations and extemporaneous speeches, he always used notes (Sen. E. Controv. 3.pref. 4–6); indeed, in contrast to some whose notes were merely outlines, he wrote out most of his speeches whenever possible (3.pref. 6). Some speakers did not use notes, though generally not for reasons that would affect the defense speeches in Acts: one writer cites the bad example of Marcus Antonius the orator, “who used to say that he never put a speech in writing so that if something said at an earlier trial would damage a subsequent client he could deny having said it” (Val. Max. 7.3.5 [LCL]). Another had such an exceptional memory as to obviate his personal need to preserve his speeches in writing (Sen. E. Controv. 1.pref. 18).

Although speakers’ notes would not be relevant to the extemporaneous speeches in much of Acts, they could be relevant to Paul’s forensic speeches at the end. (Another proposal, the use of official documents, could even account for the use of such sources after the shipwreck, but the “we” source’s careful itinerary in Acts 27 might suggest that even something of the writer’s own notes survived; see the discussion at Acts 27:43–44.) Further, secretaries could well have recorded the substance of significant speeches in assemblies (as in Acts 15); official bodies often maintained such notes.

No method allowed a verbatim record of ancient speeches (apart from access to some speakers’ own manuscripts, though even these would be altered during delivery). No system of Greek shorthand existed in the period of the great Hellenistic historians; it began to be introduced in the first century B.C.E. and became prominent in the second century C.E. In Luke’s day shorthand existed and was widespread geographically, but it was not a common or widely available practice. A sign could mean any of several words; hence its conversion “into longhand required, as it does today, some recall on the part of the stenographer,” and one reader would not necessarily understand another’s shorthand (Cic. Att. 13.32). Although this time range allows the possibility for some verbatim recording of speeches in Luke’s era, it is very unlikely that he or his informants for most speeches would have been trained in it, and virtually impossible that informants for all his speeches would have been trained in it.

Although transcriptions can be ruled out, we cannot a priori exclude the possibility of some notes. Haenchen found incredible the proposal of F. F. Bruce that Luke may have had access to notes of the speeches, but it is significant that Bruce was the classicist, with a much stronger background in Greco-Roman sources than Haenchen possessed. Quintilian mentions such taking of notes, even while emphasizing the use of memory. Our collection of discourses from Musonius Rufus appears to depend on the writings of one of his students; other sources also indicate that students took notes. Most settings in Acts do not invite this practice, but it could stand behind some other speeches, particularly in the “we” material. Although I doubt that Luke used notes for most speeches, Haenchen’s peremptory dismissal of any possibility neglects considerable ancient evidence of which he seemed unaware.

Orality and literacy coexisted in Mediterranean school settings. Those with sufficient education knew how to take notes well enough to capture the gist of speeches. Disciples of advanced Greek teachers, both in philosophy and rhetoric, very often took notes during their teachers’ lectures.

From an early period, those who took such notes sometimes published them. For instance, the notes (ὑίομνήματα) of rhetorical lectures by the fifth-century B.C.E. teachers Corax and Tisias, made by themselves or by their students, were published. The practice is attested far closer to the NT era by Arrian, a disciple of Epictetus; his accounts of Epictetus’s teaching in Koine are so different from Arrian’s own atticizing diction in his other writings that he feels it necessary to apologize for the rough style of the Diatribai (Discourses): “Whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech.”

Quintilian, the famous Roman teacher of rhetoric, inadvertently attests the potential accuracy of such a practice. Some of the boys who were his students had published in his name their notes on his lectures. He attests that their notes were fairly accurate, though he indicates that he wishes that he had had the opportunity to polish them for publication; his own published work overlapped with what they had written.

Although Jewish disciples may have taken fewer notes and emphasized orality much more highly, they also were able to take notes and use them as initial mnemonic devices to recall larger blocks of material. At least some Palestinian Jews could write. But Acts’ speeches are not academic lectures.

If students of rhetoricians took notes at their lectures, the habit might well carry over to noteworthy speeches. Hearers of speeches sometimes took notes to capture the gist of the speeches, including school declamations (Sen. E. Suas. 3.2), although some speakers wanted their hearers too spellbound to be able to take notes. Again, these practices would not affect most speeches in Acts, particularly those whose setting was spontaneous. Note-taking is more plausible for formal meetings (as in Acts 15:7–21), Paul’s defense speeches in forensic settings, and speech material in the “we” narratives (esp. 20:18–35).

One could also takes notes from which to later arrange material for a composition, again guarding memory (cf. Cic. Fin. 3.3.10; 5.5.12). Thus Aulus Gellius notes that whenever he came across information worth remembering, he jotted down notes as an aid to memory (Aul. Gel. pref. 2); he was very selective, though working through innumerable scrolls (pref. 11–12), and ended up with twenty books of notes (pref. 22).

Is it possible that Luke or anyone else close to Paul took notes about speeches? Whether Luke had advanced rhetorical training or not, he would have had sufficient education to take notes on the occasions when he was present, and if he already had historical interest, he had all the more reason to write. But even granting this possibility (and that the author was a traveling companion of Paul), he would have been present for, at most, the speeches in Acts 20; 24–26 and smaller discourse material (which would not require notes) in Acts 27–28. We could then expect these speeches to reflect greater familiarity with actual words (rather than general themes) uttered on the occasions, though we cannot be certain whether he took notes on these occasions (or perhaps from Paul’s recollections of these and other occasions).

Indeed, Luke’s sources for the essential substance of the speeches of Acts 24–26 are probably quite reliable, and this could be the case even if he were not present at the actual trials and whether or not he took notes. Unlike most earlier speeches in Acts, the substance of these speeches would have been preserved in writing, probably in the same sort of summary fashion in which he presents them. Court transcripts, in the form of brief minutes summarizing trials, are quite common in extant papyri. Against Haenchen’s skepticism about Luke’s speeches here, records of official proceedings were roughly the length Luke provides, and all these records were simply summaries. There also survive some apparent court briefs prepared for litigants’ orators. Again, however, such claims do not cover all the speeches.

Speeches in Acts do not represent a relatively controlled academic setting such as that of Jesus training his disciples; the skills of memory acquired in any ancient learning context, however, would also prove useful in other settings. Although we should not expect extensive memory of individual apostolic speeches heard or even necessarily extensive content distinctive to specific speeches, except at most on unusually memorable occasions, familiarity with ancient memory allows us to consider whether some features may have been preserved.

By Luke’s day, some of the Mediterranean world was literate as well as oral, but only a minority could read, especially on a formal level, and orality remained an important part of the larger culture. Memory cultivation is important in oral cultures.

Many cultures orally pass on information for centuries, maintaining accuracy in the central points transmitted. (Even in the transmission of Balkan ballads, where this has been disputed, the basic story is fixed at the oral stage long before the words are fixed at the written stage. These cases involve poetry or poetic devices, however, which aid memory.) In oral cultures the point of recall tends to be thematic rather than verbatim, but the substance of epics considered hopelessly long to modern Western audiences can be recalled. Variation is to be expected in oral performances, perhaps explaining a number of variants in our gospel tradition as well.

Not all societies are equally careful, but oral history can thus supplement written records in both orally skilled and unskilled societies. Oral historiography has therefore come into its own as a discipline, although it is more useful (for historical information) when applied to figures in the recent memory of the informants than when investigating the legendary past.

Like some other societies, the ancient Mediterranean world highly prized oral memory. Bards recited Homeric epics and other poets from memory, though intellectuals generally regarded these bards as low-class, engaging in an elementary exercise. (That is, ancient emphasis on memory was not limited to those with a literate education, as some have wrongly assumed.) Centuries before Luke, the best professional reciters could recite all of Homer by heart (Xen. Symp. 3.5–6); in Luke’s era, Dio Chrysostom even reports a people who no longer were able to speak Greek well but most of whom knew the Iliad by heart (Or. 36.9). Many poems remained fluid, but the Iliad remained textually constant because it became canonical for Greek culture.

In the ancient Greek world, some writers felt free to add information from centuries-old oral traditions that did not appear in their written sources. Jewish storytellers also passed on traditions informally over long stretches of time, ultimately contributing to many of the documents now collected as “Pseudepigrapha.” Such oral tradition is difficult to guarantee, but within the first generation or two, within living memory of the eyewitnesses, one would expect more of the widely circulated oral sources to remain accurate than would be the case in a later period. Even Jesus’s disciples were apparently not trained “professionally” in rigorous memory practices the way ancient bards would have been, but they probably had significantly better memories to work with than modern Western people do.

In contrast to many oral cultures today, in the ancient Mediterranean world, memorization was the most pervasive form of education. Memorizing sayings of famous teachers was a regular school exercise at the basic level; students at various levels also memorized examples. Although it was the youngest who learned by rote memorization at the elementary level, higher education (after about age 16) included memorizing many speeches and passages useful for speeches—though the ultimate goal was both understanding and remembering (Isoc. Demon. 18). Even at the stage of advanced education, which focused on rhetoric, students especially “memorized model speeches and passages” for their own use, skills that would have enabled them to preserve the gist of other speeches.

Most important for our point, they memorized what their professors taught them. As noted above, students in advanced academic settings continued to take notes on what their teachers said (e.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 108.6). But one philosopher reportedly reproved a friend who lamented losing his notes, “You should have inscribed them . . . on your mind instead of on paper.” Lucian portrays an excellent philosophic student as rehearsing each of the points of the previous day’s lectures in his mind (Hermot. 1). One need not always agree with one’s teacher, but respect for teachers was paramount, and in such a setting we would expect respectful preservation of teachings even when the transmitter registered disagreement.

Some schools were known for practicing particularly diligent training of students’ memories, especially in stories about the Pythagoreans (e.g., Philost. Vit. Apoll. 1.14; 2.30). In one fictitious account, a disciple memorized all that his teacher taught (1.19); as a method of training their memories, the Pythagoreans reportedly would not rise from bed in the mornings until they had recited their previous days’ activities. (Pythagorean emphasis on repetition for memorization reflects a relatively effective method of preserving long-term memory.)

Although legendary Pythagorean disciples were particularly famous for their memories, memorization characterized advanced education more generally. Sayings attributed to founders of Greek schools were transmitted by members of the school from one generation to the next; the practice seems to have been encouraged by the founders of the schools themselves. Disciples had to be attentive; thus the philosopher Peregrinus rebuked an equestrian who seemed inattentive and yawning.

Although the emphasis lay on memorizing teachings, students also cared about and learned teachers’ behavior, an object of their study and emulation. They also transmitted it; thus, for example, Eunapius learned a story about Iamblichus from Eunapius’s teacher Chrysanthius, who learned it from Aedesius the disciple of Iamblichus himself (Eunapius Lives 458); Philostratus has oral information about a teacher two generations earlier through an expert from the previous generation (Philost. Vit. soph. 1.22.524).

Jewish education emphasized memorization of Torah (through repeated reading and recitation). Thus a rabbi might praise a student who, instead of trying to learn on his own, merely preserved his teacher’s wisdom, like a good cistern (R. Akiba in Sipre Deut. 48.2.6). Josephus stressed memorization regarding the Torah; it was part of regular Jewish education in the home and of the basic school education all Jewish youths were to receive.

This practice was all the more intense for those studying to be teachers of Torah. Some scholars have complained (technically correctly) that all the rabbinic evidence is late, but it is hardly likely that this evidence would be discontinuous with all other Jewish and Greco-Roman evidence, especially given the particular focus on it in our later extant sources. Some scholars curiously exclude all samples of evidence for oral tradition, voluminous though they are, and the closest analogies available: rabbinic evidence because it is late, Greek or Roman evidence because it is Gentile, uneducated bards because they sang poetry, and orators and philosophers because they were educated (though not all philosophic students were), and so forth. Individually, each of these reservations is accurate, but they seem problematic when used to explain away the cumulative direction of the bulk of surviving evidence. To what nearer ancient parallels should we look? Having classified away the majority of possibly relevant ancient evidence, despite its abundance, variety, and often independence, such scholars assume that they have vindicated traditional scholarly skepticism about the Gospels and Acts. Instead, I believe they inadvertently simply preserve New Testament scholarship in a vacuum impervious to insights from appropriately cognate disciplines. For those interested in drawing on all evidence from antiquity, rabbinic evidence, like other strands of surviving evidence, should remain a legitimate subject of inquiry, provided it remains balanced with the other surviving evidence.

Rabbis lectured to their pupils and expected them to memorize their teachings by laborious repetition. In both Tannaitic and Amoraic literature, there is much emphasis on careful traditioning. At the same time, teachings could be condensed and abridged, and the very emphasis on the tradition could lead rabbis to portray their teaching as merely amplifying what preceded or to attempt harmonizations of earlier contradictory opinions attributed to a given rabbi. Thus both faithfulness to, and adaptation of, oral sources characterize early rabbinic use of earlier tradition.

Of Christian leaders in Acts, only Paul is said to have had actual “disciples,” and then only in the early period (Acts 9:25), perhaps before he learned that some others in the apostolic movement ascribed the role of “rabbi” to Jesus alone (cf. Matt 23:8). But the apostles in general would have had many hearers learning from them and eager to preserve their behavior and general teachings (cf., e.g., Acts 2:42; 5:12–16). Patterns in the broader culture would have cultivated an interest in learning well.

Sayings of famous teachers could be passed on orally to a remarkable degree of accuracy, especially in the first generation or two while the teacher’s disciples (and perhaps the disciples’ disciples) remained his primary spokespersons. Teachers passed on (παραδίδωμι) their teachings (e.g., Lucian Alex. 61), language that could also be used for the transmission of information through written histories (Dio Chrys. Or. 18.10). Both attributed and unattributed maxims were memorized and passed on for centuries even in elementary educational settings.

Still, although this observation is helpful for how we approach Luke’s preservation of Jesus’s sayings in his Gospel, it is not so helpful for explaining the more extended speech material in Acts. At most, we could expect this method of transmitting a sage’s sayings to preserve a few of the apostles’ individual sayings, not connected speeches. There are at least three reasons that this process is not very helpful for understanding speeches in Acts. First, whereas Jesus often uttered succinct proverbial statements and quips that shamed his opponents and sometimes taught in easily memorized forms, this differed from most of what we know of the teaching style of the one apostle whose works are best attested, namely, Paul.

Second, even if such brief sayings of the apostles (as opposed to summaries or memories of their message) were preserved and transmitted orally in the way Jesus’s teachings were, which is questionable, they would not have functioned as a core for the sort of speeches preserved in Acts. One might find Petrine themes in Peter’s speeches here or there, but Acts’ speeches are too cohesive to reflect a simple linking of isolated sayings.

Third and more important, although the early church preserved collections of apostolic letters, it appears to have been interested in preserving the individual sayings only of Jesus. The early church’s demonstrated capacity for, and interest in, memory, though not inviting us to think of verbatim recall of sayings, do lead us to expect that they preserved the basic ideas of their early leaders (just as they preserved Paul’s letters); thus it is reasonable to surmise that Luke had access to elements of the “primitive” apostolic message.

One of the most essential tasks of an orator was the memorization of his speech. Pliny the Younger praises a rhetorician so skillful that he could repeat verbatim speeches that he had delivered extemporaneously (Pliny Ep. 2.3.3). Rhetorical students practiced declamation, offering their practice speeches “from memory.” Orators who developed such skills with their own speeches would naturally be able to recognize and recall elements of others’ speeches as well.

One rhetor memorized his speech as he was writing it out, never needing to read it again (Sen. E. Controv. 1.pref. 17); he could remember every declamation he had ever delivered, word for word, making books unnecessary (1.pref. 18). But whereas orators would memorize their speeches—even speeches of several hours’ duration—ordinary hearers’ memorizing of long speeches while hearing them is difficult to attest. Still, at least rhetorically trained hearers could recall elements of speeches, even some they considered inferior, with memory strong enough even to supplement written sources (Eunapius Lives 494). Likewise, a deceased teacher’s former disciples might also collectively remember bits and pieces of speeches, sewing them together (Philost. Vit. soph. 1.22.524), a process relevant to communal memory.

Ancients especially reported those whose memories were so exceptional as to function as oral repositories of a generation of their own speeches (Sen. E. Controv. 1.pref. 17–18) or to recall preserved memories of ancient teachers (Eunapius Lives 481). Rhetoricians believed that artificial memory, augmented by discipline and training, could move far beyond natural memory (Rhet. Her. 3.16.28).

The elder Seneca was able to recount long sections of numerous declamations that he heard in his youth (Controv. passim), though he was admittedly exceptional. Difficult as it may seem to most readers today, the elder Seneca testifies that in his younger days he could repeat back two thousand names in exactly the sequence in which he had just heard them or recite, in reverse, up to two hundred verses given to him (Controv. 1.pref. 2). Even if his recollections of youthful prowess are exaggerated, they testify to an emphasis on memory that far exceeds standard expectations today. He also reports that another man, hearing a poem recited by its author, recited it back to the author verbatim (facetiously claiming the poem to be his own). And he also recalls the famous Hortensius, who listed back every purchaser and price at the end of a daylong auction, his accuracy attested by the bankers (1.pref. 19).

Even if the early church altogether lacked individuals with such exceptional memories (and it seems likely it may have had some with exceptional memories), far less exceptional communal memory was required to preserve the basic substance of what was preached on the few noteworthy occasions reported in Acts. Communal memory is relevant where a group of hearers could remind one another of various points, with those whose memory was most exceptional taking the lead (Philost. Vit. soph. 1.22.524). Whereas “chain” transmission might depend on a single person’s memory, “net” transmission of a community could help guarantee larger amounts of tradition.

Comparing other ancient sources, Hillard, Nobbs, and Winter note that it is possible for Luke to be more accurate at points than has often been assumed: “The careful reporting by Gellius of Favorinus’ speeches either verbatim or in indirect speech should alert us to the fact that it may not always be apposite to evaluate all or some of the speeches of Acts in what New Testament scholars popularly perceive to be the ‘Thucydidean’ tradition.” It is of course doubtful that Luke would have had access to anything close to verbatim reports of early speeches in Acts; Peter, not a professional rhetorician, would not have written out his speech afterward, and for a different reason Stephen could not have done so. Nor does one normally carry notes in preparation for speeches uttered spontaneously. Given the most likely meaning of the “we” narratives, Luke was present, at most, during Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:18–35 and during Paul’s later trials.

But again, if Luke authored the “we” section, he had (as argued above) access to eyewitness tradition for many (perhaps even most) of the cases where he was not present. Certainly, in the case of Paul’s speeches, a companion of Paul would have had access to his recollections. (Indeed, R. P. C. Hanson plausibly opines that the Pauline language at 13:38–39 and 20:18–35, which is not from Paul’s letters, likely derives instead from Luke’s personal acquaintance with Paul himself.)

Beyond speeches where he was present, like Thucydides “or any historian of recent events,” Luke would often have to depend on the memories of his oral sources. Even if Luke depended on only one source for each speech, we would expect him to report the speech because he believed he had acquired at least the gist of it; unlike some historians, he clearly does not create speeches merely to show off his rhetorical skills.

Studies of long-term memory show the character of information preservation by informal, untrained eyewitnesses in modern Western culture. Typically, informal memory will include components rather than the whole and lack the chronological framework (thus, e.g., various claims of Peter on different occasions could easily have been linked in memory reconstructions). Memories frequently conform new experiences to a schema, or interpretive grid. Memory changes over time, and memories may be shaped by talking with others who participated in events, a process likely among Jesus’s early followers, who presumably discussed their experiences among themselves. Such collective memories tend to be more stable than merely individual memories; an individual’s error can be introduced into group memory, but group memory might also correct such errors. Although memories can be imperfect, there are limits to this imperfection (i.e., they do not ordinarily involve the free composition of events); even when some details are inaccurate, the “gist” is usually accurate. The reconstruction and arrangement of memory do involve interpretive structures, but such structures would also be involved even in the initial hearing.

Studies of long-term memory also show the sorts of information apt to be preserved by eyewitnesses. These include, among other elements, unusual events, consequential events, events in which the eyewitness “is emotionally involved,” “vivid imagery,” and “frequent rehearsal.” It is difficult to doubt that hearers at some seminal speeches in the early church would have remembered and retold elements of, and what they interpreted as the heart of, such speech events. The dramatic results of Peter’s preaching in Acts 2, 3, and 10 certainly qualified these speeches as unusual, consequential, and emotionally charged events; such events would be frequently retold (cf. 11:15; 15:7), and hearers of the retellings might well retell them as well.

If speeches were given on these occasions, Luke could well have had oral information about some of what was said on these occasions, and some of it could well have been accurate regarding the substance. As a historian, Luke had the freedom to construct plausible speeches based on whatever was known or believed about the earliest Christian preaching. The point in the suggestions about oral memory, however, is that some of what was believed about early Christian preaching may well have been accurate, although we have it through the interpretive grid of hearers’ memories and Luke’s overarching narrative schema.

“Amplification” (αὔξησις) normally referred to a rhetor’s expanding on an important point in a speech, but the techniques of amplification might also allow historians to expand briefer summaries or notes about speeches in their sources. Not all the techniques would work in Acts. One could, for example, lengthen speeches by recapitulating points (Rhet. Alex. 20, 1433b.29–1434a.17; 22, 1434b.5–11), but because this procedure was especially helpful in long speeches (22, 1434b.1–5), it would probably not be very useful in short summaries of speeches (and hence, not surprisingly, is rare in Acts’ speeches).

Ancient historians often augmented kernels of tradition, filling in outlines with what seemed historically plausible (which to them might seem to provide more historical verisimilitude than simply recounting an outline that was obviously much briefer than what was said on the occasion). Diodorus Siculus allowed limited “rhetorical embellishment” in composing speeches for historical works. Historians could also abridge their sources. Those responsible for recording a previous generation’s speeches could omit passages that had been poorly expressed rhetorically (Philost. Vit. soph. 2.29.621); they could also reshape them: a writer praises a sophist who not only “received” instruction as a disciple accurately but also “passed it on” eloquently (2.29.621). Some apparently even deleted from, and added to, predecessors’ speeches as a rhetorical exercise (Pliny Ep. 7.9.5).

That most of Luke’s speeches (apart from Stephen’s) are much shorter may suggest that Luke failed to “fill in” his speeches as much. In addition, his audience probably held lower rhetorical expectations than those of most other extant historians’ audiences (see discussion in and above). Despite such expectations, Luke’s brevity was unusual, and scholars have noticed this distinction. Horsley, for example, suggests that Luke used the device of interruption to conceal this brevity.

Soards compares to Acts Hellenistic Judaism’s blending of the forms of Greco-Roman historiography with Jewish content, especially from the LXX. That the speeches in Acts resound with Septuagintal allusions renders plausible the suggestion that Luke, steeped in the LXX, might have its speeches in mind at various points. One could compare the longer speeches in the LXX, such as those of Samuel (1 Sam 12:1–25), Joshua (Josh 23:2–16; 24:2–27), and (throughout Deuteronomy) Moses. Historians in the Greco-Roman period often deliberately imitated the speeches of classical literature, and so it would not be surprising that some speeches in Acts would deliberately evoke the LXX. But there are, as Soards notes, some differences demanded at least by the different setting; the LXX speeches normally lack controversy settings and hence mostly lack an apologetic dimension.

The LXX probably also affects Luke’s “biblical” style at points, especially in recounting the early Jerusalem church. Scholars debate whether a “Jewish Greek” ever existed or alleged Semitic elements simply reflect Koine Greek in general. Because Hellenistic urban civilization in the eastern Mediterranean often imposed its Greek over previously dominant Aramaic language structures, it is reasonable to suppose that “Jewish Greek” is part of a wider phenomenon of eastern Mediterranean linguistic interchange that affected Koine in general. This principle probably extended to syntax as well. Philo and some Hellenistic Jewish intellectuals may have felt at home with periodization or syntactic subordination, but most of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha reflect the more popular-level parataxis that also appears in the translation Greek of much of the LXX. Although Luke significantly diminishes Mark’s parataxis, he probably writes for a target audience that knows the LXX and will not be put off when he adopts a consciously semitizing style (as, e.g., in Luke 1–2). (Ability to vary one’s style was held to be praiseworthy; e.g., Cic. Fam. 9.21.1.)

Other early Jewish speeches may augment their sources. Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities freely adapts biblical speeches and composes new speech material for biblical characters. While acknowledging that both Acts and Hellenistic Jewish historians used history for apologetic, Soards emphasizes the differences in the character of the speeches. He correctly observes that most Hellenistic Jewish works are fragmentary and Josephus’s speeches (which are not fragmentary) are quite different. He may overemphasize the differences between Acts’ speeches and those in 2 Maccabees, however, given the difference of purpose between the two works. Where Acts is most distinctive from other works, he argues, is in its repetition of key themes. Schubert’s explanation for the dominance of speech material probably applies to the repetition of themes as well: the speeches in Acts are mostly kerygmatic, summarizing the apostolic message.

Josephus offers our most extensive example of Hellenistic Jewish historiography. He tends, however, to be a more “rhetorical” historian than Luke could even pretend to be, and part of this rhetorical versatility includes extensive speech composition (admittedly, not all of it of the highest quality).

Although scholars have found many historical details where Josephus is reliable, most are skeptical about the historical authenticity of his speeches. He seems to have taken fuller advantage than many of his contemporaries of the historians’ liberties to create speeches for rhetorical purposes at will; that is, he is closer to the rhetorical historian Dionysius than to Thucydides or Polybius. Of more than a hundred speeches in his War, “all are uniformly cast in the author’s language and style” (not in itself uncommon among other historians), “all are deliberative or advisory, and all are vehicles for his personal viewpoint.” Many also reflect typical rhetorical uses of his time. Although they are generally plausible, they repeat the same themes throughout (for reasons different from Acts). Given the apologetic nature of his work, apologetic elements in the speeches are not surprising, even where they show up in relatively unexpected places.

Although a few of his speeches may approximate what was said and some others are so linked to their occasion that we likely get their gist, there are also many literary “‘set’ speeches inserted and invented for the turning points.” For example, in one speech Josephus has Titus exhort his soldiers publicly by talking about the Jewish God (War 6.39–41). Elsewhere Josephus presents one speech for a particular occasion in his War but provides a completely different one for his Antiquities; Josephus thus seems to presuppose that his readers would accept or at least pardon this practice.

One may also illustrate Josephus’s penchant for free composition by comparing his Antiquities in its early chapters with its primary written source. For example, Josephus considerably expands God’s words of reproof to Adam in Gen 3 (Ant. 1.46). He also invents a bold speech for Moses during the challenge of Korah (4.25–34) and a seductive speech for the Midianite women (4.134–38). And in flat contradiction to Exodus (Exod 4:10, 14–16), he claims that Moses was skillful in speech making and spoke loudly (Ant. 4.25). Even prophets such as Samuel sound like rhetoricians in a Hellenistic history (6.20–21), and Josephus continues his rewriting in the material he derives from 1 Maccabees.

Following the common historical practice of inserting speeches to keep the narrative graphic, Josephus reports private conversations in direct discourse (Jos. Ant. 19.78–83; cf. Acts 25:14–22; Tac. Ann. 12.65). Elsewhere he reports accurate information selectively. Thus Claudius’s edict to Alexandrians in Jos. Ant. 19.280–85 is a reaffirmation of Jewish rights there; historically, however, we know (P.Lond. 1912) that Claudius reproved the Jewish residents as well as affirmed their rights. The preserved decree does affirm their rights, but it also warns them not to agitate for more, and Josephus has not only omitted this inconvenient information but clearly elaborated on the decree abundantly (albeit within the spirit of the affirmation element).

Eleazar’s final speech for the Sicarii at Masada is clearly Josephus’s own composition, his “greatest masterpiece” rhetorically. Archaeology confirms much of Josephus’s report about Masada, but the speech is implausible. As Tessa Rajak observes, this speech fits the long-standing tradition, found, for example, in Tacitus, “of putting stirring and even anti-Roman words into the mouths of defeated enemies.” One could claim that the only two survivors of the mass suicide (two women who hid) might have eavesdropped and reported the speech’s substance, but what is the likelihood that two Sicarii women would have had sufficient Greek rhetorical and philosophical understanding to recount such a speech?

Worse yet, it is difficult to imagine the leader of the Sicarii expounding philosophically on the soul’s immortality (Jos. War 7.344–57), adding analogies (7.349–50) and foreign examples (7.351–57) for not being afraid of dying, and the consequent moral propriety of their suicide. Josephus’s readers would recognize that Josephus was practicing his rhetorical and philosophic hand, not reporting what Eleazar said. Of course, Josephus may invent more freely when no witnesses remain than when, for example, Agrippa is known to have publicly advised a particular course on a particular occasion.

Josephus was hardly an ideal standard for historical speech writing. He is more emotionally committed to his material than most other historians because he has a personal stake in the matters about which he writes, the other side of the advantage of his being an eyewitness. Thus he includes three of his own orations and others by his allies, all of which advance his position and denounce his own position’s critics among the rebels. Few Greek or even Roman historians “would have praised or endorsed the clumsy and inappropriate speeches of Josephus,” though many (e.g., Lucian) allowed more freedom with speeches than with narrative. We cannot infer too much from Josephus except that some historians took great latitude in speech composition and that they trusted their audience not to complain. We should not, however, assume that all historians made equal use of this rhetorical liberty. Luke is certainly less interested in providing his audience with full rhetorical speeches, even had he felt capable of doing so.

One important literary issue in Luke’s speeches is the question of their theological and (often) verbal unity. Clearly, the speeches in Acts reflect the work of the single author; because historians often used speeches to voice significant perspectives in their works, the theological unity of these speeches is essential for reconstructing the theology and message of Acts (including its apologetic thrust). These are the questions that will be of greatest importance for most readers of Acts.

Yet scholars have also traditionally asked whether such literary unity has a bearing on the question of historical authenticity. This scholarly debate, potentially more speculative and less fruitful for theological purposes, is nevertheless important for historical reconstruction. It is also important to those for whom the theology of the apostolic church, and not just the theology of Luke, is important. Because this question has consumed much scholarly ink and demands considerable space, it is our focus below; (esp. sect. 2) below will comment (albeit not at such length) on some of the theology of Luke’s speeches.

The answer to the question whether a significant degree of literary unity has a bearing on the question of historical authenticity depends partly on how we define “authenticity.” If by “authenticity” we mean ipsissima verba, it is clear that Luke has not preserved the apostles’ “very words”; probably he lacked access to them, and he probably also lacked interest in reporting them in that form. If by “authenticity” we mean the basic substance of the speeches, Luke’s selectivity and use of his own wording would have no bearing on whether he had authentic tradition, and therefore the speeches’ unity would have little bearing on the authenticity question. Indeed, some scholars argue that there is sufficient variety in these speeches to suppose that Luke did preserve this much.

In most cases, we lack sufficient comparative material to make an objective comparison, but some evidence is stronger. Luke’s speeches of Paul, for whom we have the most comparative authentic material (his letters), do contain some distinctive Paulinisms (such as “Son of God” and justification by faith). This does not mean that Luke had a transcript of these speeches, but at the very least, it suggests that Luke was familiar enough with some of Paul’s teaching that he could provide a sample of the sort of ideas that Paul would have articulated on such occasions (see comment on , above).

I do believe that it is reasonable to suppose that Luke had more than this minimum of information, but this suggestion is based especially on the case for the author as Paul’s traveling companion (argued esp. at Acts 16:10), not on the internal evidence of the speeches treated here. Because I believe that the author was Paul’s traveling companion (travel permitted much time for talking, and Luke, likelier than not, already had some historical interests at that time), I believe that Luke could have heard from Paul summaries of his message that Paul gave on particular significant occasions. At the very least, however, we can say that Luke knows enough Pauline preaching to summarize the sort of preaching that Paul gave on such occasions, though in Luke’s own words and reflecting what interested Luke in that message.

The narrative element of some speeches in Acts rehearses the story of Israel but also, at times, the outline of the gospel story also found in Luke (e.g., Acts 10:37–42). The evangelistic message in the speeches often reflects common themes that recur in the preaching of diverse speakers, showing that, as Luke saw it, there were common elements in the preaching of leading figures in the early Christian mission. Paul shares the same basic kerygma as the Twelve.

Scholars have long noted structural similarities among speeches in Acts. Eduard Schweizer’s influential essay, in particular, underlined the very clear similarities in structure among the speeches in Acts and their compositional unity. Differences, he noted, were far more often adaptations for different audiences than for different speakers. (Adapting one’s speeches for different audiences was considered good rhetorical practice; see, for example, Cic. Fam. 9.21.1.) Subsequent studies have confirmed and developed the structural patterns in the speeches in Acts.

But what should we make of this unity? The structural unity in the way the speakers preached may be more impressive than the less surprising theological unity. When Paul preaches to a Jewish audience in Acts 13, most of his message sounds very much like Peter’s earlier sermons to Jewish audiences. (Others opine [less plausibly; cf. Acts 16:3; 18:18; 21:26] that Luke provides Paul a more “Gentile theology” than appears in his epistles.)

Yet it would not be surprising if the early Christians’ evangelistic preaching shared many common elements. To some extent, these similarities in Acts’ speeches may reflect the common gospel preached by early Christians not only in Acts but in most of our earliest Christian sources (see 1 Cor 15:1–11, esp. 15:11; Gal 1:7–8; 2:7–8); although early Christians differed over matters such as circumcision and the place of Gentiles, they recounted the same basic passion outline (cf. 1 Cor 11:23–25; 15:3–7). Their unity may thus simply reflect a standard early Christian kerygmatic pattern, resembling Mark 1:14–15 and found in some early Christian epistles.

Evangelistic speeches to pagans (Acts 14:15–17; 17:22–31) follow a pattern attested in 1 Thess 1:9–10. Granted, no such pattern is attested for evangelistic speeches to Jews outside Acts, but this could be precisely because we lack early Christian speeches outside Acts and the sorts of sources that would supply us this kind of information. Thus Luke’s basic kerygma might reflect less his distinctive theology than an accurate reflection of the standard pattern of apostolic preaching. Those who believe early Christians used testimonia, or at least a common tradition of exegesis, will also not be surprised at recurrent patterns of biblical exegesis, especially in apologetic passages.

Still, although the speeches normally echo the common gospel of the early church, they do not reflect the full range of diverse emphases found in other parts of the apostolic witness (e.g., the sacrificial value of Jesus’s cross is emphasized less frequently than in some other early Christian sources, e.g., Rom 3:25; 5:9; 8:3; Heb 10:10–14; 1 John 2:2). Despite similarities with other NT documents, the apologetic themes and the ways the speeches develop them reflect more similarity among the speeches themselves than with literature outside Luke-Acts. This suggests that Luke at least pared the preaching down to elements he considers most relevant to his story.

Soards finds the repetition in the speeches one of their most distinctive elements vis-à-vis those of other Hellenistic histories. He argues that this repetition of common themes is part of Luke’s specific literary plan; the repetitions create analogies and hence an “emphasis so that the speeches articulate a distinct worldview.” He believes that the standard topics in the sermons, which recur even when not directly relevant to the situation at hand, are (1) the christological kerygma; (2) the resurrection, especially of Jesus; (3) repentance and/or forgiveness; (4) “the universal significance of God’s salvation”; and (5) the Holy Spirit. These are themes that Luke wishes to emphasize. (Some of these suggested elements in the speeches, such as the resurrection, are considerably more pervasive than others, such as the Holy Spirit.) Granted, they are also part of the preaching of the early church reflected elsewhere, as Luke correctly communicates. But they are Luke’s selection, not, for example, Paul’s or John’s or that of the author of Hebrews.

The recurrent emphasis is surely deliberate; as Cicero observes, a good orator “will treat the same subject in many ways, sticking to the same idea and lingering over the same thought” (Or. Brut. 40.137 [LCL]). Yet even orators lingering over a single idea in one speech should employ different arguments in their various speeches; Dionysius praises Lysias for varying his arguments in the introductions of his two hundred forensic speeches but complains that many orators repeat the same commonplaces even in a few speeches (Dion. Hal. Lysias 17). Luke is clearly interested in continuity more than in expected rhetorical diversity. Soards draws attention to the analogous pattern of similarities in the speeches of Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, which most OT scholars believe provide coherence to the Deuteronomistic History in its current form. Unity of the message is paramount.

The speeches in Acts must, at the least, reveal Luke’s compositional artistry because “what we have in almost every case is a précis or edited summary of a speech, and not an entire speech.” Luke made no attempt to conceal the stylistic unity of his speeches; one may compare even the obvious opening addresses of speeches in Acts, most of which include ἄνδρες (“men”) and many of which include ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί (“men, brothers”) regardless of the speaker (Acts 1:16; 2:29, 37; 7:2, 26; 13:15, 26, 38; 15:7, 13; 22:1; 23:1, 6; 28:17).

Luke’s style is fairly uniform in his narrative as well, where we can be relatively positive about his use of historical information. Almost no one disputes that Luke used sources in his Gospel (Luke 1:1–4), but Luke writes the narrative in his own style (significantly editing Mark’s grammar). He certainly edits Mark according to literary principles more acceptable among the highly educated, removing “barbarous” loanwords and transforming Mark’s simple parataxis into more complex sentence structures. Thus, even if Luke had sources, he, like other Greco-Roman historians, made them his own.

Nevertheless, although the undeniable stylistic unity of Acts’ speeches, which indicates the work’s overall literary unity, indicates Lukan composition, scholars often note that this unity need not exclude historical tradition. Acts 17:22–31 may be the most careful literary composition among the speeches, suggesting the most Lukan work, but even in this case one need not suppose that Luke lacked historical tradition about the event and essential substance (especially if, as argued above, he knew Paul and would thus have had access to Paul’s own retellings of the events).

As a comparison with other ancient sources indicates, stylistic unity does not by itself count against the presence of tradition. Thucydides and other ancient historians also lacked significant stylistic divergence in their speeches; indeed, purely stylometric analysis cannot distinguish the speeches in Tacitus from his narrative. Likewise, even on the level of thematic unity discussed above, Polybius repeats many themes in speeches by different figures, probably in part because some of these themes were common themes in speeches on issues relevant to the period in question. It should hardly surprise us, then, if apostolic preaching of the kerygma in Acts repeats common themes when many of these themes are attested elsewhere in early Christian preaching.

Thus Porter warns, “This pattern is consistent with other historians of the ancient world. Common practice was to reshape one’s sources, so that the original source was closely conformed to the author’s own style.” Aune likewise concludes, “In epic, tragedy, comedy, and Herodotean history, characterization does not include linguistic individualization; direct speech uniformly reflects the author’s style.” This is not to deny that orators, even highly praised orators, had their individual styles (see Cic. Brut. 56.204); rather, it means that historians felt no obligation—and probably, in many cases, had no means—to reproduce an individual speaker’s style in their writings, beyond some basic characteristics known to be distinctive to that speaker.

Hengel argues that Luke, though promoting his agendas in the speeches, mostly does so by using “older traditions. . . . Once again, this is the procedure which Lucian requires of the true historian: the words of the speaker should match his person and his concern.” Aune believes that in the speeches, Luke likely “combined research and memory with free composition.” But he rightly observes:

While most historians imposed their own style on speeches (e.g., Thucydides, Polybius, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus), there are important exceptions (e.g., Herodotus). Writing speeches in styles appropriate to various speakers was widely practiced by Hellenistic writers (Lucian, History 58; Theon, Progymnasmata 10). If one argues that speeches reflecting the historians’ style are not authentic, the speeches of Thucydides would fail the test (dubious), but if one argued that speeches exhibiting stylistic variety are authentic, the speeches of Herodotus could be judged historical (equally dubious).

He concludes that “Luke’s speeches stand between these two extremes, and no historical judgment is possible based on stylistic criteria alone.”

As will be argued below, the stark choice between claiming that the speeches were accurate and claiming that they were invented is a false dichotomy; indeed, many of the scholars surveyed below in fact represent not one position to the exclusion of the other but various positions on a continuum.

Virtually no scholars publishing in mainstream academic circles argue that the speeches in Acts are verbatim. Verbatim reproduction of speeches was not possible, expected, or necessarily even desirable in ancient historiography (which, as already noted, differed in some respects from modern expectations for historiography). All scholars agree that the speeches are Luke’s compositions, regardless of their views of the degree to which the speeches may also reflect traditional elements about the speakers’ theology more generally or even words on those occasions.

Indeed, Luke’s own compositional method in Acts itself refutes any misplaced expectation of verbatim quotations: although multiple accounts of the same event often repeat verbal elements verbatim, they can also rephrase them differently (compare, e.g., Acts 9:5–6 with 22:8, 10; 9:15–16 and 22:10 with 26:16–18; 10:5–6 with 11:13–14; compare also 9:4 with 26:14; 1:4–5, 7–8 with Luke 24:47–49). Other arguments may also point in this direction: if we compare the contents of the speeches, in matters of detail, with external historical data, Luke generally fares quite well, but most scholars doubt this to be the case in the notorious reference to Theudas and Judas, in a speech behind closed doors. Here many would argue that in Acts 5:36–37 Luke simply mentions the best-known revolutionary movements for Gamaliel, whose exact words would not likely be known or recalled even if (via Paul or another) his gist was known (or could be inferred from the outcome). Indeed, on the basis of the way speeches were composed, it is plausible that Luke would not need to have Paul’s Areopagus speech before him to provide a genuinely “Pauline” Areopagus speech for that occasion; he could have known well enough the substance of Paul’s preaching on such occasions (cf. Rom 1:19–20; 1 Thess 1:9) to represent him appropriately. (Focusing on differences between Paul’s presentation of natural theology in Romans and that in his speeches in Acts, scholars sometimes underestimate the points of commonality.)

To claim that the speeches are not verbatim, however, no more means that none of them may preserve the essential substance of the message of speeches than to make the same claim for sayings in the Jesus tradition. (Even the Jesus Seminar, which represents a relatively skeptical segment of North American Jesus scholarship, accepts some genuine tradition among sayings attributed to Jesus!) I have already noted that early Christians would not have preserved apostolic sayings in the same way that they preserved those of Jesus; here, however, we examine what Luke did with what he had available. If Luke has accurately preserved many of Jesus’s sayings in his Gospel—and comparison with other extant Gospels, where he can be checked, does suggest that he did—we would not expect him to prove careless in Acts with the apostolic tradition available to him. Witherington seeks to quantify this approach; when following Mark, Luke adapts wording in the narratives but “reproduces about 53 percent of Mark’s exact words.” He suggests that the same would be likely in the apostolic tradition. Because it is doubtful that Luke possessed written documents for more than a handful of his speeches in Acts, I believe that this figure is too optimistic. Nevertheless, the analogy with Luke’s use of Mark does suggest Luke’s basic conservatism (appropriate for historians) with the substance of his sources.

Luke and his sources likely treated sayings of the church’s Lord differently from others’ speeches. Yet given the respect he shows Paul and the Twelve, his respectful way of preserving Jesus material at least suggests that he would also respectfully preserve relevant elements of the apostolic message where he had them available. Luke is not an aristocratic rhetorical historian interested in displaying his own rhetorical talent in the speeches (if he were one, he apparently expended most of his rhetorical skill in his Gospel preface and had little left over afterward).

In 1942, F. F. Bruce argued, continuing the more conservative (and historically dominant) tradition, that the speeches in Acts were not verbatim reports but provided the gist of what was said on each occasion. The view that speeches in Acts provide at least the gist of what was said continues to be widely defended. Many thus contend that Luke sought to report the speeches accurately.

From the standpoint of other Greco-Roman literature, this contention is certainly plausible and (so long as phrased in terms of gist) even probable in speeches where Luke had access to what was said on an occasion. What some (though not all) of its advocates have failed to do, however, is address the literary unity of the speeches in Acts. The speeches’ literary unity has been a major factor in persuading the majority of critical scholars, following especially the argument earlier established by Dibelius, to view the speeches as Lukan compositions. Some also point to language from Luke’s day in even the earlier speeches. On the basis of such arguments, many thus doubt that Luke sought to report the speeches accurately.

But as noted above, not all scholars accept a forced choice between the speeches’ compositional unity as we have them and the historical tradition behind them. The extremes of such mutually exclusive positions, each citing substantial evidence, might bring scholarship to an impasse, but the extremes of these positions conflict much more than does the evidence cited as support for either of them. Many scholars (especially those who argue for the gist) recognize both that Luke reports something of the substances of speeches, where he has them available (which should have been often, especially for major Pauline speeches), and that he has freely reworked them to fit the overall literary and theological purpose of his work.

Many scholars who do not believe that all the speeches contain pre-Lukan material nevertheless find it in some of them. Richard Zehnle, for example, argues that Luke freely composed “a rhetorical masterpiece” in Acts 2, but finds elements of early source material in Acts 3 or in 10:34–43.

One can agree that the speeches mostly reflect Luke’s style, yet find some elements that not only are not characteristically Lukan but that better fit the language of an earlier period or other voices in NT theology. Certainly, it is reasonable to hope that in Acts Luke wishes to recall the earliest kerygma, insofar as possible, especially given his willingness to portray rather than cover over the misunderstandings of the earliest church regarding the Gentile mission (10:14, 28; 11:3) and eschatology (1:6).

Max Wilcox seeks to isolate pre-Lukan tradition by means of stylistic criteria (particularly Semitisms); Jewish Christian elements predating Luke’s more metropolitan Greco-Roman milieu; comparison of speeches with writers (e.g., Paul) outside Acts; and points where a speech does not fit its context well. Thus, for example, scholars find some Semitisms in the early speeches. These make Luke’s Greek style more awkward than is customary for him, when one would expect his speeches to be, if anything, more polished.

Many scholars point to elements of “primitive” Christology in early speeches in Acts—the speeches, in fact, with which we would have expected Luke to have had the least personal acquaintance. W. L. Knox doubts that Christians of Luke’s generation would have spoken of God making Jesus Lord and Christ (2:36) or of a “man” appointed (2:22); Stephen calls Jesus “Son of Man” (7:56), a title elsewhere in the NT found almost exclusively on Jesus’s own lips.

Although Luke would not have disagreed with the theology of the earlier speeches, neither was it the common language of his day. Knox notes that only after Paul’s conversion do we find “anything which corresponds to the later and more developed Christology of the Pauline Epistles.” Knox finds in Luke’s failure to harmonize the earlier language with the language of his own day “a striking testimony to Luke’s fidelity to his sources and to their reliability.”

J. W. Doeve finds traditional Jewish methods of argumentation in both Acts 2 and Acts 13, though suggesting that the latter is closer to rabbinic style than the former, as one might have expected from their purported authors. Doubting that Luke would be as familiar with these methods as Peter and Paul would be, Doeve suggests that these factors indicate pre-Lukan tradition. One might object that Luke could be familiar enough (like Doeve himself) to situate Paul or Peter appropriately within their milieu; yet Luke does not usually betray sophisticated knowledge of Jewish exegetical practices. Nevertheless, although this argument may suggest pre-Lukan tradition, it need not guarantee that such words were said on the specific occasion depicted; one could argue that Luke had genuine sources suggesting that Peter, Paul, or another early interpreter sometimes employed these exegetical maneuvers, without one presuming that the speaker must have employed them on this particular occasion.

Several factors somewhat temper this analysis. First, Luke may deliberately “archaize” language for the early sermons (though his ability to archaize presupposes his knowledge of earlier Christian language, making his effort more conscious than most critics suppose). Second, “high” Christology does appear even in the earliest speeches (See comment on ), though Luke’s employment of the language of his day need not obliterate some “primitive” language retained from his sources as well. Third, Paul’s own extant letters begin less than two decades after Pentecost, and so the period of development in terminology assumed by this model is relatively brief. Fourth, some elements that have been cited as “early” (such as God enthroning Christ) also appear in later documents (Eph 1:20; Heb 1:13).

Although these factors exclude some evidence and diminish the importance sometimes attached to the rest, the use of some titles only in earlier speeches in Acts does seem to reflect a knowledge that the preaching in Jerusalem differed from Paul’s preaching, pointing in the direction of tradition (at the least concerning the language and ideas of the earlier church). Although Luke emphasizes unity and continuity in the apostolic message, he is not willing to sacrifice verisimilitude to this end. His narratives, including his description of Jerusalem Christians worshiping in the temple and making inroads even into the priesthood, indicate that, in the words of R. P. C. Hanson’s Oxford commentary, Luke “knew very well what Christianity was like during the period roughly A.D. 50–60. It is unlikely that such a man knew nothing about the preaching and teaching of the primitive church.”

Scholars often compare speeches in Acts to writings attributed to the purported authors of the speeches. This is the sort of an argument that could have carried some weight with ancient stylistic critics, who recognized that particular writers might employ their language in distinctive ways. Thus, for example, some find distinctly Petrine material both in Peter’s speeches in Acts and in 1 Peter.

More substantially (given the broader and less disputed base of evidence), scholars also find parallels between the Paul of the letters and Paul’s speeches in Acts—for example, “Son of God” (Acts 9:20) and justification by faith (13:38–39). Correspondences are, however, especially notable with 20:18–35. Even those who regard the speech as largely Lukan composition often recognize its overwhelmingly Pauline elements, so that the speech reflects imitation of Paul’s actual way of speaking: “This is surely not Stephen or Peter delivering the speech. It is unmistakably Paul.” Because this is the only speech in Acts addressed to a Christian audience, it is the one case where we can best test similarities with Paul’s letters, which also exhort Christian audiences. The articulation of ministry principles here fits the practical pastoral concern of the Paul of the letters. This speech employs language familiar from philosophers and moralists, just as Paul’s letters do.

Simon Kistemaker lists several parallels:

Acts 20:18–35

Letters

Serving the Lord with all humility (20:19)

Serving the Lord (Rom 12:11)

Serving the Lord with all humility (20:19)

With all humility (Eph 4:2)

So I may complete the race (20:24)

I have completed the race (2 Tim 4:7)

Finish the ministry I received from the Lord (20:24)

Fulfill the ministry you received from the Lord (Col 4:17)

Unfortunately, only one of these parallels is from a letter universally agreed to be from Paul; the others, however, are, at the least, from the distinctively Pauline circle.

Some other scholars have provided more abundant parallels. Steve Walton’s extensive study of parallels between this speech and just one of Paul’s letters, 1 Thessalonians (probably his earliest extant letter), turns up numerous parallels. Although some other parallels might be added, Stanley Porter provides an extensive list of even verbal parallels in the Pauline corpus (including numerous ones from the less disputed letters):

Serving the Lord (Acts 20:19; Rom 12:11)

“With all humility” (Acts 20:19; Eph 4:2)

“Jews and Greeks” (Acts 20:21; Rom 3:9; 1 Cor 1:22, 24; 10:32; 12:13)

“Complete the course” (Acts 20:24; 2 Tim 4:7)

Complete his service (Acts 20:24; Col 4:17; 2 Tim 4:5)

The service received from the Lord (Acts 20:24; Col 4:17)

The grace of God (Acts 20:24, 32; passim)

Church of God (Acts 20:28; passim)

Watch for yourselves (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim 4:16)

Consider (Acts 20:31; 1 Cor 16:13; Col 4:2; 1 Thess 5:6, 10)

“Build up” (Acts 20:32; Rom 15:20; 1 Cor 8:1, 10; 10:23; 14:4, 17; Gal 2:18; 1 Thess 5:11)

The inheritance among saints (Acts 20:32; Col 1:12)

Hands working (Acts 20:34–35; 1 Cor 4:12; Eph 4:28)

“Repeated language of earnestness (Acts 20:31; 1 Thess 2:7–8)”

One could add other examples. As in Acts 20:24, the Paul of the epistles also resolved to face death for the gospel’s sake (1 Cor 15:31–32; 2 Cor 4:10–11; 6:9; 11:23; Phil 1:21; 2:17; 3:10–11). As in Acts 20:31, “admonish” (νουθετέω) is common in Paul’s letters (Rom 15:14; 1 Cor 4:14; Col 1:28; 3:16; 1 Thess 5:12, 14; 2 Thess 3:15); it appears nowhere in the NT except Paul and here. The pairing of “day” with “night” was fairly familiar in ancient language (See comment on Acts 20:31), but it may be noteworthy that Paul applies it to his ministry, as in Acts 20:31 (1 Thess 2:9; 3:10; 2 Thess 3:8). As in Acts 20:33–35, the epistolary Paul also worked to distance himself from charlatans, sometimes in conventional ways (2 Cor 2:17; cf. 1 Thess 2:3–7). The working with his hands in Acts 20:34–35 also becomes an example for others, as in Pauline epistolary exhortation. The purpose of having enough in Acts 20:35 was to “help” the weak; Paul spoke of helping the weak in 1 Thess 5:14, and the same purpose for work appears in Eph 4:28.

In addition to these verbal parallels are biographic information (e.g., Paul’s reluctance to burden churches; Acts 20:33–34; 1 Cor 9; 2 Cor 11:7–11; 1 Thess 2:9–12) and theological similarities (cf. perhaps “blood of his own” in Acts 20:28; for debates about the textual status and meaning of the phrase, see comment ad loc.). Porter remarks that Luke’s desire to add “an authentic Pauline stamp,” held by most scholars, works here only if Luke knew either Paul’s letters or Paul himself. (The former option is, as noted in above, unlikely.) Nor are “Paulinisms” the only grounds for suspecting genuine reminiscences in this speech. Indeed, in one of the most interesting turns, a conglomeration of undeveloped allusions to Ezek 33–34 (and related passages in Ezekiel) may suggest a larger midrashic homily behind the preserved Pauline speech in Acts 20 (See comment on Acts 20:26–28). That a fuller original lay behind Luke’s speech may also be suggested by the conclusion on the subject of sacrificial giving, since we know that Paul was journeying to Jerusalem to bring the collection (Rom 15:26–27; 1 Cor 16:1–2; 2 Cor 8–9), a point that Luke mostly omits. Any controversy surrounding the risks of Paul’s journey (cf. Acts 20:23; Rom 15:31) may have made his discussion of the mission’s importance (and hence the collection) paramount.

But this is one of the few speeches in the eyewitness “we” sections and also represents virtually the only speech where Paul exhorts believers, as in his letters. Although, in general, Paul’s speeches in Acts do comport with the theology of his letters much better than critical scholarship has sometimes allowed, we should not expect to find as many specific parallels in his other speeches in Acts as in Acts 20:18–35, both because they are not addressed to the same sorts of audiences as Paul’s letters and because they do not even purport to be firsthand eyewitness material (and hence less apt to preserve the speakers’ actual language as well as their subjects). ( above treats the relationship between the Paul of the letters and the Paul in Acts in more detail.)

Unfortunately, some of the individualistic elements that scholars identify are not at all distinctive of the extra-Lukan authors they identify (especially in the case of Peter, where the evidence for Peter’s distinctive theology outside Acts is quite limited). Relatively distinctive material does remain (e.g., Pauline language in 9:20; 13:39; 20:31), but outside Acts 20 one could explain this material on the basis of prosopopoeia (treated above, sect. 2.b).

On the other side again, successful use of prosopopoeia would suggest that Luke knew something of Paul’s distinctive language (easily acquired through the sort of acquaintance with him that the “we” sections suggest). That is, Luke presumably acquired his knowledge of Paul’s style at such points either from his letters or from hearing Paul; on a first-century date, the former source is problematic (and would also fail to explain the cluster in Acts 20 in contrast to earlier speeches), but in a straightforward reading of the “we” narratives, the latter is in fact likely.

If one finds consistent patterns like these in the speeches, one could make a case for pre-Lukan tradition. But as already noted, we should not be optimistic (outside 20:18–35) about finding a great deal of evidence based on style. Although “the style of the speeches is not uniform,” Aune notes, “it is consistent with the author’s general style.” Hengel rightly warns: “The style-critical method of separating redaction and tradition . . . can only be used with the greatest caution in the case of Luke, since like all ancient historians who used existing material he did not simply copy out his original sources, where these were not authoritative sayings of Jesus, but reshaped them according to his own style.” Nevertheless, Hengel is optimistic that the speeches do preserve earlier tradition.

There are some differences among the speakers appropriate to their respective characters. All the speeches are in Luke’s wording; all the speakers emphasize the resurrection; yet we can hardly imagine Peter giving the Areopagus discourse or crafting the more rhetorically skilled defense speeches of Acts 24–26. At the very least Luke has considered rhetorical appropriateness and knows at least something about the figures who participate in his narrative.

Ward Gasque argues for pre-Lukan material on the basis of Semitisms and other non-Lukan features that Luke “presumably . . . failed to edit out.” Gasque holds that, had Luke merely created these speeches to display his own theology or rhetoric, they should reflect his best literary skills, of the sort displayed in Luke 1:1–4, yet, especially in the early chapters, the grammar in his speeches does not accord with these literary skills.

This analysis, though ably offered, is open to some criticism, at least on the level of rhetoric. Since historians sought to make their speeches appropriate, Luke would hardly provide Peter with classical rhetorical skills to demonstrate his own prowess (the extensive chiasmus in Acts 2:22–36 is quite sufficient), Josephus’s Eleazar at Masada notwithstanding. Some of Acts’ speeches do employ a higher level of rhetorical skill than his narratives (though admittedly more later in Acts, where the setting demanded superior rhetorical prowess in its established Greco-Roman form). Of course, a rhetorical historian would still want to offer better rhetoric (and fuller speeches) than Luke does. As noted earlier, Luke does not write to display his rhetoric, yet this disinterest need not mean that he lacked theological agendas.

Further, Gasque’s skepticism toward the proposal that the Semitisms in the earlier chapters might represent Luke’s imitation of the LXX rather than the use of sources is open to serious challenge, given rhetoricians’ ability to vary style according to content. Still, Gasque’s basic point demands attention: were Luke intent on simply demonstrating his skills, one would expect a higher rhetorical polish than we find and longer speeches as in most other historians. Moreover, Luke is apparently well informed regarding the Semitic and less rhetorical style of earlier speeches and is probably aware of their message as well. Thus these observations do not dismiss the fundamental value in Gasque’s proposal, but its weaknesses make the proposal more difficult to quantify, in any given case, as an authenticity criterion.

Criteria such as Gasque’s and Wilcox’s can be helpful, but only if we can agree that the pre-Lukan elements intrude frequently enough in the right places to reveal whatever tradition might stand behind Luke’s text. In view of the work’s literary unity, the focus on the common kerygma, Luke’s use of prosopopoeia (including adopting semitizing style where relevant), and even the cumulative effect of such elements do not constitute a certain proof of historical tradition in most given cases (and certainly, their absence can never be used to prove its unreliability). (Again, there are exceptions—for example, Acts 20:18–35—but this most striking exception is in Luke’s “we” material.)

The process of isolating traditions in a literary work as cohesive as Acts is difficult. An analogy helps illustrate the conundrum: reconstructing sources in Luke’s Gospel if we lacked Mark and parallel material in Matthew would probably produce highly speculative, widely divergent, and usually mistaken results. What these scholars’ efforts on Acts cumulatively could suggest is that the narrative unity does not appear to obliterate all traces of underlying tradition; they therefore remind us that one does not need to choose between narrative unity and the existence of tradition, even if they cannot easily prove the use of such tradition for particular occasions.

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