14. Israel’s Story

Luke grounds the story of the Gentile mission in the story of the Jewish Messiah Jesus, and the story of Jesus in the story of Israel. For Luke, to follow Jesus was, in short, to follow Israel’s promised leader, who welcomed Gentiles into covenant obedience to himself even if much of Israel failed to obey. Luke’s emphasis on continuity with the biblical heritage was important to a movement that claimed ancient Israel’s Scriptures as their own as well as for a world that made antiquity a basic criterion of authenticity.

If Luke grounds his story in Israel’s story, appropriating the LXX, how can he be accused of anti-Judaism? As many later gnostics showed, it was possible to salvage something of a Jewish religion while rejecting its Jewishness; more to the point, later “orthodox” Christians showed a second option of which Luke is likelier to be accused, namely, that of accepting Israel’s history without accepting Israel, by replacing Israel with the church. Neither option, however, seems justifiable in light of Luke’s overall record. If Luke regards those faithful to Israel’s true king as the righteous remnant of Israel, his thinking remains in continuity with the prophets. Like other ancient Jewish renewal movements, this one would seek Israel’s restoration (cf. Luke 22:30//Matt 19:28; see comment on ). The critical difference is that he affirms the welcoming of uncircumcised Gentiles into Israel; it is the genius of his story that he seeks to do so in a way that both affirms new revelation about the uncircumcised Gentile mission (throughout Acts) and grounds it in Israel’s story (and especially the prophecies of Isaiah).

If one of Luke’s primary purposes is apologetic (as argued above) and if Luke seeks to defend the Christian movement, even in its Gentile form, on the basis of antiquity, he must ground the movement’s story in the ancient story of Israel. That the majority of the Jewish people had not committed themselves to the distinctive beliefs of this sect and that some Jewish people opposed it raised a new apologetic issue for Luke to address (just as Paul had to address the question earlier in Rom 3:3; 9:6; 11:1–2).

As noted in above, Loveday Alexander, who emphasizes Luke’s apologetic, also notes the dominance of its Jewish element. Only one of the final defense speeches addresses specifically a Roman; although other speeches do address pagan religion or philosophy (Acts 14:15–17; 17:22–31), most address Judaism (e.g., 3:12–26; 7:2–53; 13:16–41). Luke gives more space to Paul’s custody than to his missionary journeys, but even when addressing Roman officials, Paul is answering Jewish issues, and he continues to address Jewish issues (and a Jewish audience) in his final speech in Acts. Acts concludes not with legal vindication but with God’s faithfulness to his people. Although all these observations are important, Luke would have to address Jewish accusations whether or not his audience was Jewish if, in fact, their accusations could raise issues for local and Roman governments. That is, an apologetic involving Judaism would not be relevant only to a Jewish audience.

At the same time, as argued above regarding audience, Luke’s biblically informed target audience probably contained both some Jewish and some God-fearing elements not easily distinguished at our remove. Moreover, other members were likely in contact with nonbelieving Jewish people and their objections.

Some scholars contend that Luke polemicizes against Judaism. Many of these scholars would regard Acts as representing a triumphalist view of Gentile Christians against Judaism; Samuel Sandmel, indeed, goes so far as to claim that Acts presents Jewish people as “villains.”

Jack Sanders is one of the most consistent voices supporting this position, but some of his arguments are tendentious and overstated. For example, he argues that Jesus’s followers are to stay in Jerusalem only until empowered and that the commission continues to the Gentiles by way of continual Jewish rejection. But although Acts may suggest that Christians were too slow to disperse for evangelism, Paul himself in Acts affirms the piety and legitimacy of the Jerusalem church (Acts 21:23–26). Likewise, although Jewish rejection commonly appears and does provide a reason for going to the Gentiles, the rejection is not wholesale, and it needs to provide justification for going to the Gentiles only because the message is for the Jew first. (If one wonders where Luke received his understanding of Jewish privilege and the idea that Gentiles obtained only what Jewish people first rejected, one might consider the theology of his hero, Paul.)

As Rosner points out, “If the same standards were applied many of the Hebrew prophets would be branded anti-Jewish.” (Compare, for example, Amos’s rejection of Israel’s festivals in Amos 5:21.) That a different standard is applied to earliest Christian writings probably reflects our modern knowledge of the subsequent division of Judaism and Christianity and later Christian anti-Semitism, but it is historically anachronistic to read this later division into first-century documents, just as it is anachronistic to read it into the Qumran scrolls or the Hebrew prophets.

Other scholars argue that Acts portrays Christians as the true heirs of Israel’s heritage and as good citizens, but Jews as seditious. The chief priests accused Paul of stirring riots (Acts 24:5), and in good forensic fashion, he essentially returns the charge against his original accusers (though stopping short of doing so explicitly and of accusing the high priests; 24:18); Luke suggests that assassins whom the Romans wished to suppress (21:38) expected the cooperation of some of these same high priests (23:14–15). That Luke sometimes offers such contrasts is true enough, but it is easy to overgeneralize such a picture, anachronistically ignoring both Luke’s diverse portrayals of Judaism and the substantial overlap between the categories “Christian” and “Jew” (most major protagonists are, in fact, both).

Luke’s reports do include a measure of polemic, but a polemical motive for selecting information need not mean that one is inventing the information.

Whether based in fact or in fiction and whether balanced by nonpolemical elements or not, some measure of polemic is clear. Whether this polemic is viewed as intra-Jewish or external, it could serve apologetic interests: most of Christians’ conflicts with Rome in Acts stem from false accusations from segments of the Jewish community. After 70 C.E., such pleas might play well but, while reporting truth, remain selective at best: if Rome detested Jewish proselytism, it probably would also be uncomfortable with Christians even apart from Jewish accusations. (Jewish separatism would not be a cause of accusation against Gentile Christians who did not keep Sabbath or food laws, but their shared monotheism would prevent participation in domestic and civic cults.)

Some scholars think that Luke may, in fact, play down Jewish persecution against Christians, simply hoping to induce the Romans to restrain such persecution. In light of other early Christian sources, this is not impossible. Paul, at least, is known to have persecuted Christians (1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13, 23; Phil 3:6) and could not have accomplished much single-handedly. He reports other persecution of Christians in Judea (1 Thess 2:14–16), his own suffering for Christ from synagogue leaders on multiple occasions (2 Cor 11:24, 26), and the expectation of hostility in Judea (Rom 15:31). Far from displaying an anti-Jewish agenda, Luke does not even recount Paul’s synagogue beatings (2 Cor 11:24). But neither does he recount the shipwrecks that Paul mentions (11:25); publication was expensive, and Luke had only so much space in his volume to work with.

Yet if Luke plays down the conflicts between Jewish and Gentile Christians (Acts 15:25), he might also play down the conflict between Judean leaders and Judean believers in Jesus; most people still viewed Christians as a Jewish sect, and highlighting the conflict might have done as much harm as good. Because we do not have access to many first-century sources to test the assumption, it is unclear whether Luke emphasizes or plays down such conflicts more frequently. Noting the pattern of Jewish instigation in many cases of unrest in which Paul is involved (see above; comment on Acts 24:5), Luke at least emphasizes Jewish involvement where he probably responds to Jewish accusations that Paul stirred unrest (24:5). That anti-Judaism also stirs such unrest, however (16:20–21; cf. 19:26, 34), warns against the hasty assumption that Luke simply creates all such incidents to fit a pattern.

What is clear is that Luke did not create the reports of conflict. Rightly embarrassing as the history of conflict is to most Jews and Christians today (and a much larger stretch of history stands as an embarrassment to subsequent Christians than to Jews), the conflict is inescapable in first-century sources. Some scholars have argued that conflicts were later falsely retrojected into the life of Jesus; even if this were so (I am not of that opinion), whoever retrojected them was experiencing conflict, and that within the first century; one can postpone reckoning with the reality of the conflict only so long.

The same goes for arguments that later reports of hostilities were interpolated into 1 Thess 2:14–16. If one follows this view, perhaps Paul alone had expressed hostility toward Christians before he became one (1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13; Phil 3:6), making the convert the only former persecutor. Yet such optimism requires revisionism in our sources without explaining them. (Paul associates his persecution of the church with his former life and advancement in Judaism in Gal 1:13–14; this probably suggests that some others approved of Paul’s actions.)

Dunn rightly notes that even if Luke developed Jewish communities’ opposition to Paul, “he assuredly did not invent it, since Paul himself recalls such trials and tribulations, including Jewish involvement, on what must have been several occasions (II Cor. 6.4–5; 11.23–27).” That Paul received synagogue beatings so frequently (five times by the middle of his ministry; 2 Cor 11:24) testifies to his continued participation and ministry in the synagogue despite severe opposition. It also indicates that a number of synagogues proved hostile enough to his preaching to prescribe corporal punishment.

What should be realized in any of these cases, however, is that neither Jesus nor Paul was a Gentile Christian; historically, there is not the slightest doubt that they were Jews in conflict with some fellow Jews over the meaning of true Judaism. This was, moreover, a conflict certainly experienced also by a host of other first-century Jews, be they Pharisees, Essenes, social bandits, or others. Some other Jews before 70 C.E. spoke even of judgment on the temple. Not only in intra-Jewish strife nearly two centuries earlier (during the civil war during Alexander Jannaeus’s reign) but also in the recent war with Rome, Judeans massacred fellow Judeans of rival parties.

Josephus faced life-threatening opposition from rivals within his own social class (e.g., Jos. Life 272–75, 302–3), and both the passages just noted and the history of other early Jewish groups such as the Essenes (violent conflicts with the priesthood, e.g., 1QpHab VIII, 8–12; IX, 4–7; XII, 5; 4QpNah 3–4 I, 11) and Pharisees indicate the pervasiveness of intra-Jewish strife. Social-conflict theory illustrates that conflicts become most severe among groups most closely connected.

To make the actions of some Jews against other Jews a “problem” for modern Jewish-Christian relations is to retroject subsequent categories onto ancient texts in a manner that is historically irresponsible. Conflict (and the variety of motives, both noble and ignoble, that help produce it) is endemic to human nature, and it should not surprise us to find it in our sources. In most kinds of societies, new religious movements (e.g., the early followers of Muhammad or of Joseph Smith) have faced persecution. In ancient Mediterranean culture, people commonly expressed their strong opinions and partisan allegiances in opposition to others; not all disagreement resulted in abuse, but all ancient histories show that it sometimes did (nor are such incidents difficult to document today, especially in societies with less emphasis on tolerance or dialogue). This was not a specifically Jewish problem or even a specifically first-century Mediterranean problem. Nor was the conflict with all Jews; even in Acts, the Pharisees sometimes support the Jesus movement (Acts 5:34–39; 23:6–9; cf. 15:5; Jos. Ant. 20.200–203).

Genuinely anti-Jewish literature was often quite harsh. In the early Hellenistic period, Manetho’s alternative version of the exodus was that Egypt expelled the unclean Jews for leprosy. Apion’s blood libel against Jewish people (Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.89–111) resurfaced in more dangerous forms in later centuries. Such slanders eventually found their way into more mainstream sources—thus, for example, Diodorus’s report that Antiochus Epiphanes found a statue of a man on a donkey in the holiest place (Diod. Sic. 34.3). Authorities with genuine anti-Judaic sentiment often mistreated Jewish people (see, e.g., Philo Embassy 349–65; Flacc. passim).

It is difficult to think that Luke’s contemporaries would have seen as anti-Judaic his attempt to lay claim to the Jewish heritage for a Jewish movement that included uncircumcised Gentile converts; even Jews who viewed the movement as a dangerous schism presumably would have viewed such Gentile Christians as runaway God-fearers seeking to usurp proper Jewish privileges, not as potential persecutors. They did not, of course, have the vantage point of the experience of nearly two millennia of Christian anti-Semitism from which to read the text. I would argue that such a modern reading is an anachronistic counterreading of Acts, though it is an understandable one from the social location of its subsequent readers.

One may helpfully contrast the language of Luke with that of Justin Martyr, who writes in the mid-second century. Although Justin affirmed continuity with Israel’s Scriptures, he claimed them for the church and no longer for Israel (at least in a polemical context). In fact, he viewed the church as “the true, spiritual Israel.” Many of his views continue those found in first-century Christian apologists, but he surpasses them with such explicit claims, writing as a Gentile Christian in a time when the divide between ethnic Israel and the church has grown. Justin does not go so far as Apion or even some later Gentile Christian writers, but he goes considerably beyond anything we see in Luke-Acts.

Some subsequent readings of Acts in later historical settings may have been anti-Jewish, but it is unlikely that informed readers in Luke’s first circle of churches would have construed the text in this manner. The polemic within Luke-Acts, like the polemic of the generation that preceded it, is primarily intra-Jewish.

The expression “Jews” is employed in a number of ways in Acts—sometimes, though not nearly always, in a pejorative way. The negative uses, however, correspond to the negative uses sometimes found in other Jewish texts about fellow Jews. The picture as a whole is complex, but it does make a difference to what degree Luke’s portrayal represents what at least Jewish Christians would have viewed as intra-Jewish polemic and to what degree it represents what they would have viewed as a Gentile attacking Judaism.

Some scholars think that Luke addressed especially Jewish Christians. Jervell argues that Luke’s language reflects not only the LXX but also descriptions of the law at home in Hellenistic Judaism. He also believes that contrary to usual modern views, Gentile Christianity did not become dominant until the second century and that Acts bears this out. Marilyn Salmon thinks that Jack Sanders is correct in his survey of events in Luke-Acts but mistaken in his perspective, since a narrative approach suggests that Luke is an insider rather than an outsider to Judaism.

Some scholars believe that Luke writes after a full schism with the synagogue; others, that Luke sees the schism but wants “to prevent any final schism,” noting that many Jews believe (Acts 13:43; 14:1; 17:4, 11–12; 18:8; 19:9; 20:20; 28:24). Some argue that Luke writes after the schism but accurately represents the law piety of the previous generation of Jerusalem Christians to emphasize that the breach between Judaism and Christianity stemmed from the non-Christian Jewish side. I have argued elsewhere that the communities in the NT books typically accused of the harshest anti-Jewish polemic (Matthew, John, and Revelation) were precisely those that most saw themselves as part of Judaism and engaged in intra-Jewish polemic.

As mentioned in , I believe that Luke’s audience contained a Jewish and God-fearer nucleus (which would have been the teaching center for the first generation of converts) but that Gentile converts who viewed themselves as converts to Israel’s true faith were now numerically dominant. Yet whether Luke’s audience contained more Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians, it apparently saw itself as following Israel’s faith and certainly Israel’s true king.

Pervo argues that after Acts 9:22 Luke employs “the Jews” only for Jewish people who reject Jesus, indicating two distinct communities. He believes that this fits a Lukan setting outside Judaism and that Luke wrote to make Jews appear bad and to make Christians look innocent. This perspective fails on several counts. First, although “Jews” are hostile in 12:3; 13:45, 50; 14:2, 19; 16:3; 17:5; 18:12, 14, 28; 20:3, 19; 23:12, 20, 27; 24:9, 27; 25:2–10, 15, 24; 26:2, 7; and 28:19, the later and more abundant and pervasively hostile references involve specifically “Judeans” (note Paul’s use of the term for Judeans in 28:19, where he addresses Roman Jews, 28:17). More obviously, the designation applies more broadly in 11:19; 13:5, 43; 14:1; 17:1, 10–11, 17; 18:4–5, 19; 19:10, 17; 20:21; 22:12; 28:17; and it applies to servants of Christ in 16:20; 18:2; 21:20–21.

Second, any sectarian group within Judaism would also distinguish its community from others, as scholars have generally recognized since the discovery of the Qumran scrolls. One thus cannot assume that Luke writes after schism with the synagogue simply because he identifies Jesus’s followers as a movement distinct from larger Judaism. Because the Diaspora churches were ethnically mixed and less ethnically focused than synagogues, it made sense to identify them differently from the Jewish community. To outsiders, however, a movement that shared Jewish morality, Jewish Scripture, and the Jewish God would appear more Jewish than not, and Luke makes no attempt to conceal these connections.

Finally, with reference to claims about persecution or innocence (the moral issue behind Pervo’s criticism), not only in Paul’s day but even still in Luke’s, the Jesus movement was by far the smaller minority and with far less power than the rest of the Jewish community. One might thus wonder whether it is not Luke but Pervo who writes only from a postseparation perspective.

I am among those who think that full schism happened at different places at different times and in many places would not yet have occurred for all Christians in a synagogue community. I do, however, think that the churches in places such as Corinth and especially Philippi (see comments on audience in ), though rooted in the ethos and culture of synagogue Judaism, were now primarily ethnically Gentile. Thus they would share both a Jewish religious and moral ethos, on the one hand, and often an experience of past Gentile worship and behavior, on the other. Acts does indicate breaks from the synagogue in Corinth (18:7) and Ephesus (19:8–9), though with churches that included a Jewish and God-fearing nucleus.

Probably Jervell is right to the extent that Gentile Christians still saw themselves as converts to the true form of the biblical Jewish faith, Israel’s heritage. Luke is no Marcion, nor is he from an era when Gentile Christians could claim to have “replaced” Israel. The valuing of Israel’s heritage guarantees friendly dialogue with other synagogues, however, no more than their common biblical heritage rendered Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes on friendly terms. Certainly, Jervell is correct that Jewish Christianity remained vibrant. For example, second-century Gentile apologists who condemned Ebionites for their low Christology continued to affirm the Nazarenes, whom they regarded as faithful Christians as well as Jews. Lucian speaks of the Christians’ “priests and scribes in Palestine.”

What is at least clear—and most significant—is that Luke can conceive of Christians remaining in the synagogue for extended periods of dialogue until finally being forced out (e.g., Acts 18:26; 19:8–9), even if he himself was no longer part of the synagogue. For Luke, faith in Jesus does not necessitate separation from the synagogue or from Israel, from the Christian side. Luke certainly emphasizes the church’s heritage in Israel’s biblical piety and presents the Jerusalem church’s continuance in this heritage positively (2:46; 21:20); though Gentile anti-Semitism sometimes harms Paul’s opponents (18:14–17; 19:33–34), it also works against Paul (16:20–21).

As mentioned, scholars debate exactly during what period Gentile Christians became dominant in the church; this process may have varied from one location to another, and some churches may have remained more attached to their Jewish roots than others were. In any case, by the time Luke is writing, many Jewish people have been rejecting the early Christian message, whereas many Gentiles have been embracing it. Luke welcomes the Gentiles, but may now be forced to address a theological and apologetic problem that appears as early as Paul’s Letter to the Romans (e.g., Rom 3:3, 29; 4:10; 9:14; 11:1, 11): is the dominant Jewish view of Paul’s contemporaries correct, in which case Gentile Christians are not fully members of God’s people, or has salvation history experienced an irreparable breach with a rejection of Israel? Luke rejects both these alternatives; his emphasis on fulfilled prophecy points to the Gentile influx being part of God’s predicted plan from the beginning, even if most Jewish people had not recognized it.

However we reconstruct Luke’s audience, the polemic within the narrative itself (a much less speculative question) is mainly intra-Jewish. No invective in Acts is stronger than Stephen’s speech, but this speech is explicitly intra-Jewish polemic from a Hellenist Jew to other Hellenist Jews, and its harshest words are quotes or allusions from the prophets. Stephen’s preaching sounds much like the polemic of other pre-70 C.E. Jewish sects (e.g., the Essenes) who regarded themselves as the true remnant of Israel. No Gentile Christians in Acts engage in harsh rhetoric toward anyone Jewish.

Throughout this discussion, I am employing terms in relatively conventional ways (to remain as intelligible as possible to my larger audience), but the categories themselves are anachronistic. Judaism was extremely diverse in its beliefs both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, and the supposition that the fall of the temple immediately conformed all Jews to one standard is naive. Further, Rome often treated Judaism as an ethnic entity (hence the need for tolerance) rather than a religious entity probably until the end of the first century. “Christianity” as an entity is also a later construct; Jewish Christians saw themselves as proponents of the true faith of Israel, and early Gentile Christians saw themselves as converts to it. I accommodate the language of subsequent history simply because one must use familiar language, however imperfect, to communicate; but much that is traditionally associated with this usage is anachronistic.

Although conflicts between Jesus’s followers and Jewish leaders existed, as noted above, Luke also reports diversity in Jewish responses (e.g., Acts 2:41, 47; 4:4; 6:7; 13:43; 14:1–2; 17:10–11; 18:6–8; 19:9; 21:20; 23:7; 28:24). Such diversity was a disappointment to those expecting the conversion of all Israel, but it was certainly not wholesale rejection, either.

Likewise, Luke portrays significant protagonists, such as Mary, Jesus, Peter, and Paul, as faithful Jews (e.g., Luke 2:21–24, 27, 39; 9:30–31; 10:26; 24:44; Acts 10:14; 16:3; 18:18; 21:23–26); those in supporting roles, such as Simeon and Anna, Jairus, and the poor widow with two coins, also present in a very positive light at least a significant remnant within Jewish piety. As C. K. Barrett remarks, “A book whose main actors—Peter, Stephen, Paul, James, not to mention Jesus (mainly off stage)—are all Jews cannot easily be judged anti-Jewish (still less anti-Semitic—Acts shows no interest in race as such).”

In Acts Paul experiences widespread opposition not limited to Judaism. Indeed, in Luke’s skillful irony, the same Paul who faces conflict from the Jewish community in some cities faces conflict elsewhere because he is a Jew (Acts 16:20; cf. 19:34), and even what he suffers from Jews is for the sake of Judaism (26:6; 28:20). (This is reported from the vantage point of Paul, but as a reliable character, he normally reveals the Lukan perspective.)

On other occasions, it is precisely Paul’s fidelity to Judaism that creates friction with less faithful Jews. Immediately after he exhorts pagan crowds against polytheism (14:15–18), Jewish opponents incite them to stone Paul (14:19). Much of the synagogue in Ephesus seeks to distance itself (19:8–9, 33–34) from his monotheistic preaching in that city (19:26–27). The opposition to Paul’s Gentile associations (cf. 21:27–29) may be based on principle (cf. 15:5) but, in practice, opposes what was becoming the most successful single program in history to recruit Gentiles for the worship of Israel’s one God. These observations apply not only to Paul: when the earliest apostolic church faces opposition from the priestly authorities, it also associates such hostility with “the Gentiles” (4:25–27), who supplied the governor who condemned Jesus.

We may also note Paul’s solidarity with Jewish customs in Acts (16:3; 18:18; 21:23–26; cf. 15:29–31), a fact that has troubled some scholars as incompatible with Paul’s own epistles (I believe partly because we have too often read Paul from a traditional post-Reformation Protestant lens; see above). Paul offers no condemnation to the law faithfulness of Jerusalem’s Christians, which is presented in a favorable light in Acts so long as it is not imposed on Gentiles (21:20–26). Brawley argues that in addition to producing apologetic, Luke is irenic. He points out that the second half of Acts employs various “conventional legitimating techniques” to show that Paul and his Gentile mission pose no threat to the true Jewish message and heritage despite Jewish opponents and “sympathetic Christian” schismatics.

Certainly, Luke does not oppose Jewish Christians; he honors law-keeping (e.g., Luke 1:6, 9–10; 2:21–24), and so his portrayal of Jerusalem Christians devout in the law is a positive one (Acts 21:20). He does object to the ethnocentrism of some Jerusalem Christians (11:3; 15:5; 21:21) but portrays the leaders of the movement positively and Jerusalem Christians as generally open to learn from God’s ways (11:17–18; 15:7–21).

Claudia Setzer rightly notes both favorable and unfavorable Jewish attitudes toward Jesus throughout Acts, though she believes the latter predominate, especially in the later section. To reduce Luke’s presentation to a single perspective is to oversimplify; Luke includes both.

Some argue that ancients may have lacked the modern interest in exploring subjective individuality; certainly, they often show interest in broader character types and in moral explorations. Yet in contrast to some modern expectations about them, ancient readers preferred narratives spiced up with round, realistic characters, though some flat characters were also acceptable. Both dramatists and historians were concerned with characterization.

Luke uses a standard ancient narrative technique of contrasting characters, presenting Jewish believers in Jesus positively but the nation’s religious leaders negatively and blaming the latter for the division. The division, however, is between believer and unbeliever, not between Jew and Gentile, though Luke seems to emphasize greater responsibility for those who had greater knowledge of God’s law (Luke 12:52–53; cf. 12:47–48). The division repeatedly cuts its swathe through the Jewish community itself (e.g., Acts 14:1–2; 18:6–8; 19:9; 28:24), so that the complaint is not that no Jews believed but that God’s people, as a whole, did not do so.

Not all groups in Acts respond the same way. In the early twentieth century, even Harnack, who complained that “the Jew is in a sense the villain in this dramatic history,” also noted that Luke differentiates Pharisees from Sadducees and reports favorable information (e.g., Gamaliel’s speech and the conversion of Jerusalem priests and Beroean Jews). “This impartiality of the narrative, in a point where there was such an extraordinary temptation to partiality, is a valuable proof of the careful sense of justice of the historian St. Luke.”

Luke also provides diverse pictures of the non-Christian Jewish community, including the Pharisees (who appear almost entirely negatively in the post-70 Jewish Christian Gospels Matthew and John). Luke sometimes presents the Pharisees as a composite character clueless about Jesus’s real mission, but he also presents them as respecting Jesus, fighting him only verbally, and sometimes even trying to protect him from those who wished to kill him (Luke 13:31). The Pharisees and Jesus clash over law observance, but it is the Sadducees who engineer his execution (e.g., 22:2–4, 52, 66; 23:10; 24:20).

Brawley finds Luke’s view of the Pharisees positive in Acts, and in the Gospel more positive in his redaction than in his tradition. For example, Luke uses them to legitimate Jesus in the Gospel and, to some extent, Paul in Acts (see, e.g., Acts 5:35–39; 23:6–9). In one of the most thorough studies of the Pharisees in Luke-Acts, David Gowler demonstrates Luke’s diverse characterizations of the Pharisees in his narrative. He argues that Luke presents them more favorably in Acts than in the Gospel, as positive legitimators; even the Christian Pharisees who take the wrong position in Acts 15:5 seem to accept the church consensus in 15:22. In Acts, the Pharisees continue to be the Jerusalem Christians’ closest influential allies (5:34–39; 23:9); one can be both Pharisee and Christian (15:5); and Paul is comfortable identifying himself with Pharisaism, as far as it goes (23:6). For Luke, one commentator notes, Paul is “the ideal Jew.” (See, further, comment on Acts 5:34.)

By contrast, the chief priests are enemies of the church fairly consistently throughout Luke-Acts. The cornerstone image suggests special judgment on the leaders (Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11). Given the negative portraits of them in other contemporary Jewish sources, however, one cannot regard Luke’s perspective as anti-Jewish; the Jewish Christians were not the only ones who experienced the Sadducean aristocracy’s power as abusive. Luke can hardly be charged with anti-Semitism for opposing the same Sadducees who were hated by Pharisees and Essenes.

Some patterns are fairly consistent in Luke-Acts:

“The people,” left to themselves, loved Jesus and his apostles—not only in Galilee but even in Jerusalem (e.g., Luke 21:38; 23:27; 24:19; Acts 2:47; 5:13).

Jerusalem’s leaders feared Jesus’s and the apostles’ appeal to the people (Luke 19:47–48; 20:6, 19, 26; 22:2, 6, 53).

Jerusalem’s leaders charged that Jesus was misleading the people (Luke 23:5, 14).

Far from being anti-Jewish, Luke’s narrative, as a whole, suggests that Jerusalem might have embraced the message about Jesus had the corrupt authorities not thwarted this outcome (cf. Acts 2:47; 4:3–4; 5:12–18). Luke is not anti-Jewish; he is against the authorities who once ruled Jerusalem. (Perhaps Judea’s function in his narrative also includes an element of theodicy, explaining the holy city’s destruction by showing the elite’s rejection of Israel’s rightful spiritual leadership.)

If Luke could expect some other Jewish people after 70 C.E. to share this perspective of the pre-70 Jerusalem Jesus movement, his argument may have had some appeal. Israel’s exploitive leaders, who proved corrupt and whom the Pharisees and other Jewish groups disliked, directed public opinion against the early Jesus movement. Had it not been for the obstinacy of this class, Luke may imply, Judaism as a whole might have believed, and salvation history might have been consummated in the first generation (without a prior large influx of Gentiles).

Jervell’s argument in 1972 shifted the consensus of scholarship, which had previously viewed Luke as mostly negative toward Judaism. Others have developed a more positive approach from a variety of diverse angles, but with the basic sense that Luke viewed “the rise of the early Jewish church as itself the locus of the fulfillment of hopes for Israel’s restoration,” through Jesus’s “ascension to the eternal throne of David and gift of the Spirit.”

Many scholars see Luke as pro-Jewish rather than anti-Jewish. One may take, for example, the positive portrayal of much Jewish observance in Luke-Acts, from key figures in the infancy narratives to Paul (Acts 16:3; 18:18; 20:16; 21:26) and others (e.g., 22:12).

Some of the indications of Luke’s loyalty to Judaism that scholars have proposed would not sound as pro-Jewish to many modern Jewish hearers as among many NT scholars. Thus, for example, the claim that Luke has not rejected Israel sounds welcome, but scholars typically demonstrate this claim by appealing to Luke’s continuing evangelistic interest toward Israel, which runs counter to most modern Jewish groups’ rejection of “Christian proselytization.”

Likewise, Luke’s emphasis on continuity with biblical Israel, demonstrated by portraying Gentile Christians as grafted into God’s people (to borrow a Pauline metaphor), can be read anachronistically in light of later Christian claims to have “replaced” Israel. But while these topics constitute issues of conflict in contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue, NT scholars can view them as pro-Jewish insofar as we read Acts against the theological agendas of Luke’s own generation, which is our historical interest here. We need only consider that most Gentiles were polytheists and many resented Judaism; by contrast, those who see Luke as pro-Jewish can note that his Christian Gentiles worshiped Israel’s God, used Israel’s Bible, and refused to relinquish their solidarity with Israel’s heritage in the face of opposition.

Some who see Luke as pro-Jewish point to the sequence of events: in honor of their favored ancestors, God offered Israel blessings first (3:25–26); Paul always began with the synagogues (13:5, 14; 14:1; 17:1, 10, 17; 18:4, 19; cf. 16:13); thus there is continuity on God’s part, even if Israel did not embrace it. There is a sense in which Luke sees positive continuity on Israel’s part, too, even in the act of rejection, since Israel’s history reveals many rejections of God’s divine plan without God’s ever repudiating the people as a whole (Acts 7). Some scholars suggest that Luke presents the story of rejection in such a way as to evoke pathos, as in ancient tragedy, though Luke still had hope for a greater Jewish response in his day. The element of tragic fate is not missing in Josephus (e.g., Ant. 20.257). Similarly, narrative irony may connect his themes of prophecy fulfillment with frequent Jewish rejection.

Scholars usually concur that Luke argued for Christianity as “a legitimate development of Judaism,” whether or not he fully explained his reasons. Jervell argues that Luke’s primary interest “is to demonstrate the church as the one and only true Israel, the unbroken continuation of the people of God in the time of the Messiah-Jesus.” Some argue that Luke sees the promises of Luke 1–2 fulfilled in Acts 15; this emphasis would fit a situation in which the Jewish Christians were still in competition with other Diaspora Jews for the title of Israel. Others would argue that Acts 15, like other events in Luke’s work, offers merely a prelude to Israel’s future restoration (cf. 3:19–21 and comment loc. cit.)

If some scholars’ language such as “true Israel” is too strong or anachronistic, at least the language of the continuation of the remnant (which, through most of Israel’s history, welcomed Gentiles) is clear in Luke-Acts (this is what many scholars mean by the language “true Israel,” in any case). As already noted, however, the language is much stronger in Justin Martyr and later writers (see comments in above) than in the NT (cf. Rom 2:29; 11:17–18; Gal 3:29; 1 Thess 4:5). Indeed, many Jewish people expected widespread apostasy in Israel in the end time, and some seem to have viewed their own group as the true elect remnant of Israel.

Such language may sound offensive today after a long history of Christian anti-Semitism, and sound interpretation must prevent the exploitation of such texts in the service of subsequent anti-Jewish traditions. But for first-century Christians, such language constituted a means of establishing their distinctive identity within Judaism and their solidarity with salvation history. Some scholars understandably complain that Luke’s language of Judaism is more favorable than his content, since the promises now do not apply to ethnic Jews without conversion. But apart from the intervening centuries that lend plausibility to the accusation of this perspective supporting anti-Judaism, one could level the same charge against the Dead Sea Scrolls, where most of Israel remained followers of Belial (e.g., as the “congregation of Belial,” 1QH^a X, 22–23). In the first century, as Dunn notes, “the key categories were not yet fixed” (emphasis his); not only the meaning of “Christian” but that of the terms “Jew” and “Judaism” were understood differently by different communities.

That this continuity with the biblical remnant necessarily portrayed the rest of their people as breaking covenant with God (a matter for which biblical history also provided them numerous precedents) mandated evangelism as a sign of concern for their people. Thus some scholars think that Luke’s emphasis on a continuing witness to Israel despite many rejections shows the continuing loyalty of early Christians to their Jewish roots.

When Acts concludes, Jewish people continue to respond as well as reject (Acts 28:24), though for Luke, as for Paul, the failure of Israel as a whole to embrace the Messiah is unacceptable (3:19–26; Rom 11:7, 25); the remnant is not yet “Israel as a whole” (Rom 11:26). As in the prophets, God “contends” with Israel, summoning his people to repentance, but never finishes with them or rejects them. Already twice after promising to turn to the Gentiles and doing so, Paul keeps preaching to synagogues elsewhere (Acts 13:46; 18:6).

Thus Paul’s final recorded rebuke to a local, divided Jewish community (28:25–28) is just that—it simply continues the pattern in which Paul rebukes a Jewish community in a particular locale but continues to go to the Jewish people first. (This passage is, indeed, less explicit about turning from Jewish hearers than the previous two references, after neither of which did Paul abandon the mission to Israel. See fuller discussion in the commentary at Acts 13:46; 18:6; 28:25–28.)

The frequent (though not consistent) repetition of Jewish rejections reinforces Luke’s point, which is not final Jewish rejection (an idea that would make inexplicable the continuing repetition of preaching first to Israel; see comment on Acts 13:46; 28:28) but, rather, the availability of the gospel also to the Gentiles. Probably in Lukan as in Pauline eschatology, had Jewish people embraced the message, God would have fulfilled the promises by consummating the kingdom, and the Gentiles would have missed an opportunity to hear (3:19–21, 25–26; Rom 11:11, 25, 30–32). As Jesus sought out the marginalized, including the morally marginalized (“sinners”), in Luke’s Gospel, so the theme of ironic, eschatological inversion carries over into Acts in the mission to the Gentiles. Acts’ ending, like the ending of the parable of the elder brother (Luke 15:32, addressing Judean religious experts in 15:2), is open-ended, an invitation.

In the same conclusion, Paul continues to affirm his own solidarity with, and love for, his people (Acts 28:19–20) and to reason from the Jewish Scriptures as God’s word (28:23, 25–27). Some scholars even read this final scene as defending Paul against the charge of betraying Judaism (cf. 28:19).

Moreover, the movement of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome is not so much a matter of moving away from Jerusalem as it is of moving toward a more strategic base for mission. As Luke Timothy Johnson notes, “Each movement of the Gospel away from Jerusalem also circles back to it (see 8:14; 11:1–18, 29–30; 12:25; 15:2; 18:22; 19:21; 20:16; 21:13; 25:1)”; Luke seems at pains to emphasize that the expansion of the Christian movement was effected in continuity with the Jerusalem Christians. Jerusalem remains the eschatological focus of promise (compare Acts 1:9–11 with Zech 14:4; cf. also Acts 1:6; 3:21–26; the temporal limitation in Luke 13:34–35; 21:24; probably 22:30).

In light of expectations apparently posed in the Gospel, Israel’s promised restoration (cf. Luke 1:68–78; 2:25, 32, 38; 19:9; 21:24, 28; 22:30; 24:21) would not be abandoned in Acts any more than the promised Gentile mission is; it is simply deferred. Acts does not reiterate this point often, given its different focus on mission to the nations, but it reiterates it often enough (see commentary on ; cf. also 26:6–7; 28:20). Mission may cause heritage to be reconceived; it does not abolish it.

Discussion of the use of the OT in Acts is necessarily relevant for, though different from, the question of Acts and Judaism. Whatever Luke’s approach to Israel more generally, he certainly affirmed Israel’s Scripture; in this period, that affirmation probably also suggests that he values Israel as well. Although Gentile Christian anti-Semitism eventually made it possible for writers to claim the OT while remaining hostile to the Jewish people, we lack evidence (or logic) for any Gentiles’ rejecting the OT yet supporting the Jewish people. We also lack evidence in our first-century Jewish documents for the later Christian anti-Jewish synthesis.

Whatever the other literary influences on Luke (other than his direct sources), the most obvious would be Scripture, the authoritative heritage he shares with his audience and apparently expects them to recognize. Acts contains at least twenty explicit quotations from the LXX and, perhaps more demanding for the audience, a host of allusions (e.g., to Isaiah in Acts 1:8; to Elijah in 1:9). As C. K. Barrett rightly puts it, “The influence, whether literary or theological, of the Old Testament upon the Lucan writings . . . is profound and pervasive.”

Luke’s level of biblical sophistication is lost on most modern readers but would not have been lost to nearly the same extent on Luke’s ideal audience. Naturally, not all Luke’s real hearers were biblically literate, but his ideal audience was, and the latter must have constituted enough of his anticipated real audience (at least among those who might hear the work multiple times) to merit the consideration lavished on his work. Luke himself appears so immersed in biblical language (or at least the sort of eastern Mediterranean, Jewish language matrix of which biblical language was a part) that it pervades much of his work.

That both biblical and Hellenistic culture inform our understanding of Luke-Acts should not surprise us. Diaspora Jews would know both the Scriptures and the surrounding Gentile culture, and early Christians learning within such a Diaspora Jewish matrix (whether by synagogue or church) would naturally develop the same flexibility. That Luke could freely incorporate both kinds of influences seems to represent an emerging consensus among scholars.

Like other biblically focused Diaspora Jews and early Christians, however, Luke would have rooted his theological worldview especially in Israel’s salvation history. Whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls and other “sectarian” literature demonstrate the diversity of interpretations of Scripture available in early Judaism, most Jews were united around a central canon (even if some of its outer boundaries—e.g., in the case of what we call “apocryphal” works, or perhaps Esther at Qumran—were still being defined in various circles; the Torah and prophets were not in dispute).

Luke can expect most of his ideal audience to pick up his more obvious Hellenistic literary or cultural allusions (e.g., Acts 14:11–12; 17:19), and we will explore these allusions wherever possible in this commentary. These allusions could be important for those for whom Greek history, mythology, and legend were an important and emotional part of their heritage, not readily severed from their background. For such an audience, Paul’s ministry at “Troas” (perhaps recalling nearby Troy) or as a new Socrates in Athens allowed them to redeem or salvage, as it were, part of their own cultural heritage. (Luke, admittedly, does not carry out such a plan with the sort of sophistication expected of one for whom connection with Hellenistic learning was a major goal.)

Still, though I comment on and affirm such probable associations for Greek hearers, the far more explicit, marked references to the LXX suggest a different primary world and interpretive theological grid. Most obvious and central for Luke is his explicit grounding of Jesus and the Gentile mission in the story of Israel. As in the case of most other extant first-century Christian writings, biblical quotations are quite frequently explicitly marked; other possible allusions (including non-Jewish ones) are usually unmarked and hence are rendered most plausible when a significant accumulation of evidence for a multiplicity of them offers greater cumulative confidence that some are present.

The bulk of Luke’s quotations occur in the first half of Acts, especially in speeches to Jewish audiences (i.e., in the sort of speeches found in the first half of Acts). Since most biblical quotations in Luke’s first volume also occur in discourse material (especially from Jesus) and since speeches are adapted to their audiences, this distribution is what we would expect. Nevertheless, Luke also closes with a strategic, paradigmatic text from Isaiah (Acts 28:26–28), matching the function of some earlier paradigmatic prophetic texts at key points (Luke 4:18–19; Acts 2:17–21; see comment on ). The Gentile cultural allusions predominate especially during the Diaspora mission, but it is Scripture and Israel’s heritage that frame and provide the more consistent, explicit subtext for the narrative.

Luke’s real audience certainly exhibited, and he presumably expected, a range of cultural literacy and interpretive competence, so that he included allusions that only some could be expected to comprehend fully. Sometimes these allusions might involve intertextual echoes from the context of Luke’s marked quotations; astonishing as this seems to some modern Western readers overloaded with access to a vast range of texts, many people in various largely oral cultures can achieve significant familiarity with, and competence in, a single narrow canon (such as the Torah or Qur’an). Since few would have their own copies of biblical scrolls and hence most would depend on oral memory and recitation, they might prove most familiar with narratives (the sequence of which provides ready contextual recall), psalms (if recited in worship), and the Torah (used regularly for legal and ethical teaching).

Since Luke also values quotations from the prophets, sometimes using them as climactic complements to Torah citations like readings from the prophets following the Torah in synagogue services (Acts 3:24; 7:49–50; 13:40–41, 47), he apparently presupposes a biblically literate ideal audience (though he, undoubtedly, welcomes other hearers and would remain mostly intelligible to them).

Perhaps Luke merely wishes that his audience will have such familiarity, but that he typically displays it himself (despite some apparent minor lapses in the biblical stories in Acts 7) renders plausible his expectation that some of his audience will possess it. There was nothing unusual or elitist about writers’ expecting specialized levels of knowledge among their readers; these expectations allowed them to produce readable specialist works uncluttered with the excessive examples or explanations that valiantly monumental attempts to be comprehensive can sometimes produce.

Luke does not anticipate specialist sophistication (he does not engage in detailed, rabbinic-style argumentation like some passages in Paul’s letters), but he does expect an audience rooted in the biblically informed piety of synagogues and churches. On a more popular level, Greek writers assumed their audience’s basic knowledge at least of Homer and often of other quotations and allusions that functioned as part of their cultural “canon” (see comment on Acts 17:28). (Greek writers sometimes used these to lavishly display their learning—expecting their audience to recognize and admire the use of allusions—or, probably more relevant to Luke, to connect with the audience on a deeper level through common background stories.) But less culturally literate readers need not have caught even such allusions to follow and enjoy a popular work.

Some of Luke’s ideal audience probably knows the OT well enough to follow his arguments; after all, Luke himself does (despite some apparent confusion in, e.g., 7:16; he probably had no scrolls in front of him as he worked, but could often depend on communal memory for corrections during early readings of the work).

Luke’s biblical quotations are most prominent in speeches, especially those addressed to Jewish audiences (and hence more common in Acts 1–15; but also cf. 23:5; 28:26–27). Scripture citations typically serve the same function as other authority citations in Greco-Roman speeches, albeit with a more defined and authoritative canon. The periodization of history in the speeches resembles OT models.

Most or all of Luke’s quotes are from the popularly used LXX (in some of its variant forms) rather than from his own or other translations of the Hebrew. Although Greek-speaking Jews even in Jerusalem would have used the LXX, some scholars have been troubled by the implications of LXX quotations in the mouth of Jesus or Aramaic-speaking apostles, instead of seeing them as simply reflecting a fresh translation of their words. But while the form of such quotations could suggest that Luke (and Mark, who also uses the LXX) has added quotations himself, it could also simply suggest that he and many other Diaspora Christians transcribed or standardized their quotations according to the forms in which they were accustomed to hearing them. In either case, it may be significant that none of Luke’s Scripture quotations (in contrast to those, e.g., in Hebrews) must depend solely on the LXX for their sense.

Some scholars suggest that Luke and some other early Christians may have used Jewish or Jewish Christian collections of texts. Some Jewish interpreters collected lists of biblical proof-texts (as in 4Q176), possibly for later use in exhortation or apologetic. They could also compose their own thematic midrashim (as in 4Q177). Luke could depend on such a collection of texts from the LXX, but the collection might be oral, might simply reflect favorite preaching texts of the early church, or might be gathered in part from his own study of Scripture. If Luke can expect his audience to recognize the sources and sometimes the context of his quotations, it would not be startling if he knew Scripture well enough to find these quotations himself. Others suggest that if Luke expected his audience to recognize without explanation the function of these citations, then many of them must have already been in prior Christian use.

Luke derives his primary texts from a number of locations in Scripture. For example, for Luke, the Davidic promise is critical for Jesus’s role, as exemplified in the infancy narratives, in the use of “Davidic” psalms such as Ps 110, and in some synagogue preaching (Acts 13:22–36). More dominant at key points in Acts’ structure is Isaiah. David Pao suggests that the primary scriptural grid “is none other than the foundation story of the Exodus as developed and transformed through the Isaianic corpus.” Although this claim may limit Luke too much to a single “primary grid,” the use of Isaiah in various programmatic texts (Luke 3:4–6; 4:18–19; Acts 13:46–47; 28:25–28) makes a strong case, as do the clear allusions in Luke 24:46–47 and Acts 1:8. Certainly, Isaiah proves to be the most critical grid for the narrative’s movement to Gentiles, making Pao’s contribution one of the most helpful recent studies on Acts.

Isaiah does not, however, provide Luke’s only narrative subtext. Although Isaiah supplies most of the programmatic statements, one of Luke’s key programmatic texts in Acts clearly derives from the briefer prophet Joel (Joel 2:28–32 in Acts 2:17–21); it may be secondary to Acts 1:8 in import but is a more explicit citation. Such various statements prove programmatic for different themes: 1:8 is programmatic for the church’s Spirit-empowered mission (the primary theme for Acts), and 2:17–18 for the work’s emphasis on Spirit-empowered speech (more explicitly than in 1:8) and charismatic guidance; 13:47 applies the witness commission of 1:8 to Paul and his colleagues, who carry forward the Gentile mission; and 28:25–28 interprets the response of the Jewish community that further (as well as retrospectively) justifies turning to Gentiles.

Luke offers samples of biblical interpretation dispersed among various speeches. He does not leave us to merely wonder what sorts of texts in the Law, Prophets, and Writings Jesus explained to the disciples in Luke 24:27, 44. Luke offers examples from biblical narrative, for example, the behavior of Elijah and Elisha (Luke 4:25–27); and overviews of salvation history (with a Mosaic emphasis in Acts 7:19–44; with a Davidic emphasis in 13:22–23, 34–36; cf. 2:25–34); he draws on the “Writings” (cf. Luke 24:44) with various psalms (Acts 2:25–35; 13:33, 35). As in good synagogue expositions (as best we can reconstruct them), 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).

Besides explicit quotations, Luke employs the literary template of some biblical stories, especially in pre-Pauline portions of Acts (where his hard information seems less complete), such as the Elijah-Elisha succession as a model for the succession narrative in 1:9–11 (with the gift of the Spirit in 1:8, although 1:8 has a more direct allusion to Isa 49:6 and Isaiah’s context), or the foreigners and eunuchs of Isa 56:3–6 in Acts 8:27. This does not mean that Luke invents the events—he could have made the parallels closer, more frequent, and more conspicuous had he wished, and the tradition of Jesus’s ascension is reported elsewhere in the NT (see comment on ). But Luke expects the reader (already familiar with Elijah and Elisha parallels in his Gospel) to recognize in the allusions a repeated salvation-historical pattern. If one accepts earlier biblical revelation, Luke seems to indicate, Jesus and the movement eventuating in the mixed Diaspora churches are consistent with, and hence are the true continuation of, God’s workings of old.

By various means, biblical quotations in Luke-Acts establish continuity with the larger story of Israel and God’s plan. One of these means appears in the theme of promise and fulfillment. In addition to his other approaches (e.g., typology; see below and comment on Acts 7:9–16), Luke often draws on direct biblical prophecies; fulfillment of prophecy plays a larger role in Luke’s use of the OT than many have recognized.

As noted above, both Jewish and Gentile literature in Luke’s era regularly affirmed both divine necessity in history and its partial revelation to humanity by oracles; hence the theme of fulfillment would have been amenable to most ancient audiences. Such patterns are evident in both Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Josephus (see, further, comment on Acts 2:23). That the patterns also appear in Josephus suggests that rigid dichotomies between Greek and Jewish cultural heritages on this point are unhelpful.

Various early Jewish writers approached their Bible from different perspectives, and so the extent and function of this theme varies among them. Carl Holladay’s study (focusing on fragmentary authors) contends that Luke’s prominent promise-fulfillment theme is foreign to other Hellenistic Jewish works despite their diversity among themselves in most respects. By contrast, N. T. Wright (focusing on Josephus) argues that Josephus presents his War as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, comparable to Luke-Acts. Surveying a larger range of literature, William Kurz concludes that the theme of promise and fulfillment, connecting contemporary stories with the larger story of Israel, appears elsewhere in Hellenistic Jewish narratives. Various communities may have laid claim to this approach, he points out, precisely because they were competing for the title to Israel’s heritage.

There is a difference in degree, however, between Luke and a minority of Jewish writers, on the one hand, and the majority of Jewish writers, on the other, a difference related to their divergent eschatological perspectives. Certainly, some Jewish authors envisioned fulfillment of biblical promises in their own time; even more commonly, they understood biblical history’s patterns as normative for all times (and completed in the eschatological time). “The very premise behind reading history as involving promise and pattern is divine design and the constancy of God’s character as he saves in similar ways at different times. Jewish imagery reusing Exodus motifs or new creation language shows how Judaism accepted this view of history.” In these ways, Luke’s approach resembles that of his contemporaries (see discussion on Luke’s typological approach below). For the most part, however, Luke is arguing for a degree of current, climactic eschatological fulfillment not found in most ancient Jewish writers. An obvious exception is the pesher interpretive technique in the Dead Sea Scrolls because the Qumran community after its first generation also apparently embraced a degree of realized eschatology because of their presumed vantage point near the end of the age.

Whatever the degree of, and purpose for, its differences, in any case, Luke uses the promise-fulfillment motif in competition with other visions of Israel’s faith. In Greco-Roman rhetoric, different parties would argue lawgivers’ intention in laws, each to his own advantage (e.g., Hermog. Issues 60.13–14). Jewish Christians and other Jews would have argued the same ways.

It may be relevant here that whereas the opponents of Jesus and his movement sometimes challenge them with arguments that presuppose an understanding of Scripture (Luke 6:2, 7; 13:14; 14:1; cf. Acts 6:9–10; 19:8–9), they are barely reported as quoting any Scripture in the narrative (cf. Luke 20:28). Although, presumably, some offered such arguments, Luke gives them little explicit voice, especially in Acts. Far and away, Jesus is the primary expositor of Scripture in the Gospel (e.g., 4:4, 8, 12, 18–19; 7:27; 8:10; 13:35; 18:20; 19:45; 20:17, 37, 42; 22:37; 23:30, 46; 24:27, 45). In Acts, Peter (Acts 1:20; 2:17–21, 25–28, 34–35; 3:23, 25), Peter and John (4:11), the Jerusalem church (4:25–26), Stephen (7:3, 7, 18, 28, 32, 34, 37, 40, 42–43, 49–50), Paul (13:33–35, 41, 47; 23:5; 28:26–27), and James (15:16–18) quote Scripture. Even before the Sanhedrin, those quoting Scripture are the Jerusalem apostles (4:11), Stephen (7:2–53), and Paul (23:5)—not the Sanhedrin itself. In Acts, then, Jesus’s movement carries the primary voice of Scripture, for its adversaries fail to mount convincing arguments from it or accurately hear God’s voice in it (28:26–27).

Through his promise-fulfillment motif, Luke presents “his story of Jesus and of Christian beginnings” as “a prolongation of biblical history.” Kenneth Litwak contends, “Luke ties his narrative to the Scriptures of Israel. Luke-Acts forms the continuation of the history of God’s salvific acts and the outworking of the divine plan, to which the Scriptures of Israel witness.” Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 is the longest survey of salvation history in Luke-Acts, and offers insight into Luke’s agenda: Jesus and the experience of the church (7:37, 51–52) continue and climax earlier biblical experience, a living experience of God’s activity in the present (cf. 2:17–18).

Many elements of Luke’s style suggest some continuity with biblical history, but some of these may simply characterize the salvation-historical reporting style of someone steeped in the LXX. The promise-fulfillment motif, by contrast, might suggest that Luke places on the biblical level the events he narrates—primarily in Jesus but also in the apostolic mission (e.g., Acts 1:16–20; 2:16–21; presumably he anticipates this continuing in the church’s activity until Christ returns). Likewise, some scholars contend that he takes up OT themes to complete, in a sense, the OT story. If “complete” sounds too strong (as if implying the exclusion of other compatible stories [cf. Luke 1:1] that might also complete the biblical metanarrative), scholars today generally at least agree that Luke embeds the Pauline story in Jesus’s story, and both in the story of Israel. As Rosner puts it:

Whether or not Luke saw himself as writing Scripture, the evidence of this chapter indicates that Acts is integrally related to the Scriptures regarded by Jews as normative and not simply a document brought into an artificial relation with the Old Testament by the later Christian Church.

The Dead Sea Scrolls show that not everyone accepted the idea of a “closed canon,” and some early Christian writers may have believed they were continuing the OT story in authoritative ways for their particular audiences. This does not necessarily mean that Luke sees himself as writing Scripture in the sense that he would anticipate all Christians accepting his work as “canonical.” It is not at all clear that he would have regarded his work or a select group of works including his as the final word (a new “closed canon”) on the matters he covers. (It is likewise not surprising that some later Christian historians, like Luke, whom they emulate, start their local salvation histories where the currently accepted canonical histories leave off. Yet such extensions of biblical history in no way necessarily implied extending the canon.)

Nevertheless, he undoubtedly did envision his work as true, authoritative, and useful as a history for the parts of the church where it would circulate, as perhaps the most useful of many efforts (cf. Luke 1:1–3). Given his pervasive emphasis on the Spirit’s empowerment to present the gospel (e.g., Acts 1:8), he probably also believes that he is writing inspired history like earlier biblical historians. And he sees the events he describes as the climax of salvation history to which other events pointed.

Luke’s use of Scripture allows him to emphasize the antiquity of the faith (i.e., the true faith of Israel proclaimed by prophets and apostles) and hence serves the apologetic function noted above in . It also allows him to justify, from Israel’s heritage, ideas controversial among his Jewish contemporaries, especially that of moving beyond that heritage (7:48–50) and bringing salvation for the Gentiles (cf. 2:17, 39; 13:47). Complaints of Luke’s antinomianism, though less frequent than complaints about Paul’s, are equally misplaced in both cases (see comment on Acts 16:3; 18:18). The new phase in salvation history invites a new approach to the law’s intention, not a rejection of its value.

Luke rereads Israel’s history in a manner that differs starkly from many readings of his contemporaries. Luke’s “revisionism,” however, develops elements within the biblical tradition itself. Although Luke favorably views some patriarchs, he mostly avoids whitewashing their faults in the biblical record, and he sometimes emphasizes a history of often rejecting God’s commandments and deliverers that makes the rejection of Jesus more understandable.

One primary approach to biblical application in Luke-Acts is typological. Indeed, if the arguments offered in Acts are an indication (see esp. Acts 7), patterns in salvation history probably constituted a major part of the tradition of biblical interpretation that Luke claims the apostolic church received from Jesus (Luke 24:27, 32, 44–45).

Typological patterns need not imply allegorization of earlier biblical narratives in the modern sense of “allegory.” In fact, most ancient “allegory” did not assume the radical polyvalence of narratives. Usually allegory did assume that selected narratives were mythical representations of moral or natural truths, but sometimes interpreters “allegorized” simply by drawing principles from patterns in their texts. Apart from the question of “allegory,” writers often drew analogies with known texts for rhetorical, illustrative, or explanatory purposes. Sometimes historians used earlier figures in their narratives to foreshadow later ones.

Noting patterns within a cohesive literary work is simply sound narrative analysis. Ironies in the book of Esther, for example, appear too clear to be accidental:

Xerxes divorces Vashti for refusing to come (Esth 1:12, 19)

Xerxes forgives Esther for coming unbidden (Esth 5:2)

Vashti lost favor at a banquet (1:3, 12)

Esther was installed at one banquet (2:18) and received favor at another (5:6)

Haman is hanged on Mordecai’s gallows (7:10; 8:7)

Mordecai obtains Haman’s job (8:2, 7, 15; 9:4)

(For examples of patterns in pentateuchal texts, see the commentary’s discussion of Acts 7.) Where ancient readers approached the text differently from modern ones was by treating all of Scripture as a cohesive work and sometimes by viewing the patterns as normative (or at least suggestive) for subsequent events. Writers of Israel’s Scripture themselves often followed earlier patterns in Scripture or tradition as models; for example, crossing the sea in Exod 14 “provides the pattern that structures” the Jordan crossing in Josh 3–4, as Josh 3:7 makes explicit.

Finding such patterns did not, however, mean that most Jewish interpreters (even Philo) treated biblical narratives as pure symbols, the way some Stoics salvaged Homer. Historians also extrapolated lessons from historical narratives, as already noted, without thereby assuming that the narratives they recounted (with the occasional exception of the distant past) were purely mythical codes without genuine historical merit. Most Jewish interpreters accepted most of biblical history as authentic history (some educated Diaspora Jews excepting some embarrassing passages) even while preaching from patterns they found there. The earliest Christian writers seem to have followed suit (e.g., 1 Cor 10:6, 11; Gal 4:24), and we would expect the same from Luke, who provides morals in his story yet presents it as historical narrative.

Luke, like his Jewish and Christian contemporaries, understood biblical narratives as well as more explicit prophecies as prophetically inspired. If the biblical prophets pointed to Israel’s ultimate hope of restoration especially with regard to the messianic era (Acts 3:18), one could justify reading the biblical story as leading toward that goal. Thus Luke does not simply provide proof from direct prophecy; he uses the Scriptures to provide theological context for the events he narrates. Patterns that revealed consistent ways that God had dealt with Israel and Israel had often dealt with God, the sorts of deliverers God used, and so forth, could all suggest the way the ultimate and ideal deliverance would take place.

Some scholars even suggest that Luke draws parallels between how reliable characters interpret Scripture in his two volumes. Charles Talbert suggests seven such parallels:

Jesus as Interpreter in the Gospel

Believers as Interpreters in Acts

Scripture predicts John as preparing the way (Mal 3:1, in Luke 7:27)

Scripture predicts John as preparing the way (18:24–28)

Jesus fulfills biblical promises (e.g., 4:18–19; 20:17)

Jesus fulfills biblical promises (e.g., 3:22–26; 4:11; 10:43; 13:23; 17:2–3, 11; 28:23)

Jesus’s death and exaltation fulfill Scripture (e.g., 9:22; 18:31–33; 22:37; 24:7, 25–27, 32, 44–49)

Jesus’s death and exaltation fulfill Scripture (e.g., 2:25–28; 3:18; 8:32–35; 13:27, 33–35; 17:2–3; 26:22–23)

Jewish rejection fulfills Scripture (20:17)

Jewish rejection fulfills Scripture (4:11; 13:27, 40–41; 28:25–27)

Scripture had promised the Spirit (24:46, 49; Acts 1:4, 8)

Scripture had promised the Spirit (2:16–21)

Scripture promised the Gentile mission (24:46–47; cf. 4:25–27)

Scripture promised the Gentile mission (13:47)

Scripture promises that the dead will be raised (20:37)

Scripture promises that the dead will be raised (24:14–15; 26:6–8)

In fact, Acts 18:24–28 (and even 13:24–25) does not tie John to Scripture fulfillment. Although the other examples have better textual support, it is not clear whether Luke deliberately connects Jesus’s interpretation with his followers’ interpretation in any one-to-one correspondence; he may simply raise the themes pervasively, whenever possible. Nevertheless, the line of continuity is clear, since it is Jesus who, after the resurrection, helped his followers to understand these promises in Scripture (Luke 24:25–27, 32, 44–49).

Understanding these texts retroactively in light of the events that the early Christians had experienced (Luke 1:1; Acts 2:16–18; 10:43; 26:26) would have seemed no more unusual than earlier Israelites’ so understanding prophecies they believed fulfilled in their day; or the Qumran sect with its pesher interpretations; or Josephus’s understanding the abomination of desolation as having occurred in his era. On the premise that the events they narrated (especially the deliverer’s resurrection) had taken place, a retroactive christological hermeneutic for the prophets and salvation history made sense. Luke’s christological hermeneutic is more grounded in the biblical story’s actual salvation-historical patterns (see discussion on Acts 7:37 and passim in Acts 7) than the sometimes wildly allegorizing christological hermeneutic of some later patristic and medieval interpreters, but it is christological nonetheless. Early Jews and Christians apparently shared similar procedures for reading; it was not usually techniques that differed but the “interpretive grid.”

If some offered pesher readings based on the presence of the time of eschatological fulfillment (see, more fully, comment on Acts 2:16), Jesus and his first followers who believed that they stood on the threshold of the time of eschatological fulfillment may have responded accordingly. That the Messiah had already come would be a controlling exegetical presupposition for those who believed it; one could read the promise in light of the fulfillment. We should remember, however, that Luke’s thematic use of Isaiah shows that even when he uses types or prophecies, Luke is interested in the broader story.

Educated ancient readers were familiar with the notion of literary character types (see, e.g., Theophrastus’s Characters), and Luke uses some obvious ones. He often uses the OT narrative pattern of the rejected prophet, for example, in Stephen’s ministry. He uses various earlier biblical models for Jesus’s ministry and (by his parallel-lives structure; see below) makes Jesus an important grid for the Jerusalem church at Pentecost, for Stephen, and, more fully, for Peter and Paul.

Some ancient Jewish hermeneutical approaches seem arbitrary to most modern readers and often appear anachronistic and lacking in historical perspective. Some of these conventional interpretive methods, such as gezerah shevah, appear only rarely in Luke’s work and may reflect his sources (see comment on Acts 13:34). But while this method, usually used to connect key words, is rare in Luke’s narratives, his method of connecting characters is more characteristic of his interpretive activity; see discussion at Acts 7, especially 7:9–16. (One might compare also the fairly free handling of biblical texts in Josephus and other Hellenistic Jewish writers, as noted briefly in above. Such writers commonly reframed the biblical message in a context more intelligible to hellenized readers. But Luke seems to adapt the stories far less than Josephus; see, for example, comment on Acts 7:20–22.)

Far from being anti-Jewish as some have argued, Luke respects the Jewish people and maintains hope for their future. Nevertheless Luke, like Paul, expresses dismay that large numbers of Jewish people have rejected what he regards as God’s current agenda in salvation history.

Particularly relevant for understanding Luke’s theological perspective is his approach to Scripture. In arguing that the Gentile mission was a legitimate extension of Israel’s faith, Luke presents the biblical heritage positively, emphasizing continuity with this heritage wherever possible. He finds discontinuity only where necessary and where confirmed by clear divine sanction (from the biblical God of Israel), such as the divinely arranged meeting between Philip and the African treasurer or the corresponding visions to Cornelius and Peter. Luke finds in Israel’s Scripture both promises and patterns fulfilled in his own day. For him, the ministry of Jesus, the Jesus movement, and the Gentile mission climax and continue the biblical story in his own day.

On Gnosticism and Judaism, see sources in Keener, John, 166–68, but now esp. the perspective of Smith, Gnostic Origins.

Many studies address Acts and Judaism, e.g., Müller, “Entscheidung”; Brawley, Luke-Acts and Jews; also Jervell, Luke and People of God; Sanders, “Salvation of Jews”; for a survey of recent discussion, see esp. Schröter, “Actaforschung 4.”

With others, e.g., Ray, Irony, 172.

For Acts as apologetic, see Alexander, Context, 183–206.

Ibid., 200. Against Alexander, I would count three, since Festus is part of the audience in Acts 26; but the Jewish element in Acts 22 and 26 cannot be minimized.

Alexander, Context, 204. Of course, speeches to Gentiles can become relevant within the narrative world only once the mission moves among them.

Ibid., 204–5.

Ibid., 205.

Ibid., 206.

Which seems to be the case even later in some settings, such as Rev 2:9; Mart. Pol. 13.1; 17.2; 18.1.

Conversely, some scholars think that Luke emphasizes the church’s Jewish roots to counter a rejection of these (such as later appears in Marcion’s time; Tuckett, Luke, 69–70, following Houlden, “Purpose”); in my opinion, this proposal does not account for the apologetic noted here as well as it accounts for the continuity with Judaism in Acts. Some first-century Gentile Christians did need reminders of their Jewish heritage (Rom 11:18–24), but this does not appear to be the primary purpose of Luke’s apologetic.

See, e.g., Slingerland, “‘Jews’ in Pauline Portion” (in later part of Acts); Matera, “Luke 23,1–25” (on Lukan redaction of Mark in Luke 23). Tyson, Marcion, 128, thinks that Luke “elevates Moses and the prophets” while denigrating “most ancient and contemporary Jews”; this fits his reconstruction of a second-century Lukan Acts both combating Marcionites and avoiding Judaism. (His reconstruction of Marcionite views [24–49, 128–31] appears conveniently more modern and pleasant.) The anti-Judaic tendency of the Western text, of course, is widely accepted (see Epp, Tendency).

E.g., Hare, “Rejection in Gospels and Acts,” 27 (though he applies this charge especially to Matthew).

Sandmel, Anti-Semitism, 100 (perhaps following the language of Harnack, Acts, xxiv–xxv); cf. Klausner, Jesus to Paul, 229, who suggests that Acts’ central theme is “that the Jews are the source of evil.” Such opinions from previous generations of Jewish scholars are understandable given the history of Christian anti-Judaism. Strangely, Sandmel in Judaism, 363–39, instead finds in Luke’s Gospel comparatively little anti-Semitism.

E.g., Sanders, “Salvation of Jews”; idem, “Who Is a Jew?” For his more general discussion of early Jewish-Christian relations, see idem, Schismatics.

Sanders, “Salvation of Jews,” passim and summary, 117. For the pattern of initial Jewish acceptance followed by rejection, see more fully Tyson, “Jewish Public.”

See Rom 11:11–15, 19–20; cf. Rom 1:16. Cf. also the Jesus tradition (Mark 7:27–29).

Rosner, “Biblical History,” 71; cf. (more selectively) Hare, “Rejection of Jews,” 35; on Matthew’s Gospel, see Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:260–67.

Against essentialist definitions that make “Christianity” and “Judaism” mutually exclusive categories, see, e.g., Eisenbaum, “Polemics.”

Wills, “Depiction of Jews.”

Faure, Pentecôte, 493, sees the Alexandrian text as more ambivalent than is the Western text, because the former revised the latter, more consistent text. Israel remains elect in the Western text, and through the end of Acts hope remains for Israel’s future conversion, whereas the Alexandrian text allows for a future parousia, with its resurrection and last judgment but without a need for Israel’s conversion. As noted in our prolegomenon, however, most scholars consider the Western text later and many regard it as more anti-Jewish.

See, e.g., Mason, Josephus and New Testament, 201–2; Agouridis, “Δεσμὰ τοῦ Παύλου.” Cunningham, Many Tribulations, 340, suggests that Luke is not anti-Jewish but that he is forced to address why most of Israel rejects Jesus and most persecutions were Jewish.

The Flavians emphatically celebrated Jerusalem’s demise not only in Judea but in other provinces and in Rome (see Zarrow, “Coins”).

For the domestic conflicts created by converted wives in polytheistic households, see, e.g., Balch, Wives, passim.

Bammel, “Activity,” 357.

That Paul faced genuine hostility from some fellow Jews is difficult to deny in the face of his own reports (Barclay, “Paul among Jews,” 115); Acts essentially confirms the picture in Paul’s letters on this point (115–16).

These shipwrecks preceded the shipwreck depicted in Acts 27:39–44, but one nighttime shipwreck, in which Paul spent part of a night and day in the sea (risking hypothermia; 2 Cor 11:25), was more dramatic than the brief time in the water in Acts 27:43–44 (though the storm was undoubtedly shorter). Luke’s shipwreck occurs at a better juncture in the story and merits more description because the story’s author was an eyewitness at that point.

Although Luke does report serious conflict (Acts 15:5; indeed, the views of the Judeans in 15:1 may be harsher than those of Paul’s rivals in Galatia) and may have had the language of the apostolic decree, he cannot match the tone of suspense about the council’s outcome offered by an affected participant (Gal 2:2). He and Paul each mention different compromises (Acts 15:20; Gal 2:9–10).

Certainly, in second-century sources (e.g., Justin Dial. 16), it became more common to employ rhetorical amplification of persecution (Flannery, Anguish, 28); “atrocity stories” are a common method of rhetorical retribution (Bailey, Peasant Eyes, 75–77; e.g., Cic. Sest. 35.77; Val. Max. 9.2.1; b. Giṭ. 57a; y. Sukkah 5:1, §7), as in later rabbinic reports of the slaughter at Bethar (b. Taʿan. 4:5, §10; Lam. Rab. 2:2, §4; 3:51, §9).

Sanders, Jesus to Mishnah, 95–96; idem, Figure, 217. But Pharisees were not primary enemies of Jesus’s followers in the 40s through the 60s (Theissen, Gospels, 230–31), and Mark’s conflict accounts clearly reflect pre-70 material (see Witherington, Christology of Jesus, 60). Moreover, our earliest Christian mention of Pharisees specifies at least one Pharisee involved in persecuting Jesus’s followers (Phil 3:5–6). Multiple attestation supports the thesis that Jesus did have Sabbath conflicts (Borg, Conflict, 139–43; Witherington, Christology of Jesus, 66). They appear in Mark (e.g., Mark 2:23–28), independently in John (John 5:1–9), and perhaps independently in special Lukan material (Luke 13:10–17; Q provides few narratives). On Jesus’s conflicts with other teachers, see Holmén, Covenant Thinking, 90–106, 221–51; Keener, Historical Jesus, 223–37.

See further Keener, Matthew, 351–53; idem, Historical Jesus, 223–37; for a somewhat later period, idem, John, 65–68, 194–207. See esp. and at greatest length Holmén, Covenant Thinking, passim.

For an interpolation, see Bruce, Thessalonians, 49–51; Setzer, Responses, 16–19; against it, see Collins, “Integrity”; Donfried, Thessalonica, 198–99; Witherington, End, 101; Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 177 (citing esp. Hurd, “I Thess. 2:13–16”); Watson, Gentiles, 80 (noting Ps 68:23–24 in Rom 11:9–10, an irenic context). There is no textual evidence for an interpolation, and so the interpolation proposal appears suspiciously like “content criticism”; the passage may reflect pre-Pauline tradition later reported in the Synoptics (see Wenham, “Apocalypse,” 361–62; Donfried, Thessalonica, 203).

Similarly, the zeal that motivated Paul’s persecution of Jesus’s followers in Phil 3:6 is associated with ancestral traditions in Gal 1:14; although this does not guarantee that his colleagues interpreted the ancestral traditions the way he did, interpretation within the academy (implied by his “advancing” in 1:14) was normally a corporate activity.

Dunn, Acts, 225; cf. Barclay, “Paul among Jews,” 115–16.

E.g., Jos. War 6.301. The Testament of Moses, which accuses priests of polluting the altar (5:4), prophesies judgment against the temple (6:8–9), and because the Roman ruler destroys only part of the temple in the oracle, the prophecy undoubtedly predates 70 C.E. 1QpHab IX, 6–7 warned (rightly, it turned out) that the Kittim (by whom is meant the Romans) would carry off the Jerusalem priesthood’s wealth.

Le Cornu, Acts, 388, cites 4QpNah 3–4 I, 6–8; Jos. Ant. 13.372ff.; War 1.88ff., 96–98.

Of course, those familiar with the most recent Roman civil wars would recognize that strife was pervasive, not limited to a single people. I emphasize intra-Jewish conflict here only because of the specific issue under discussion.

For harsh persecution from the Jerusalem high priest in the Qumran scrolls, Le Cornu, Acts, 388, cites 1QpHab I, 13; V, 9–10; VIII, 8, 16; IX, 2, 9–10; XI, 4–5; XII, 2–3; 4Q171 II, 18–19; IV, 8. The “Wicked Priest” has been identified with Jonathan (Rost, Judaism, 163), John Hyrcanus (Brownlee, “Messianic Motifs,” 13–15), and “the false priesthood of the Temple at any time between the Maccabean period and the fall of the Hasmonean dynasty” (Fritsch, Community, 83–84). Some have identified the “Young Lion” of 4QpNah 3–4 I, 5 with Alexander Jannaeus (Allegro, “Light,” 92; Eisenman, Maccabees, 35); others have maintained that a specific identification is impossible (Rowley, “4QpNahum”); yet others have even identified him with Pontius Pilate (Thiering, Gospels and Qumran, 70, with little support). As the original Teacher of Righteousness became a model for the future one (CD VI, 10–11) and the title probably applied to all his successors (Buchanan, “Office”), the identity of the original “Wicked Priest” may have applied to the priesthood in perpetuity. Overman, Crisis, 224 cites 4QMMT as a sample of halakic debates at Qumran.

Some scholars find clues of Essene antagonism toward Pharisaism (Roth, “Subject Matter of Exegesis,” 65; idem, “Reference”; Dupont-Sommer, Manuscrits, 33) or of Pharisaic or rabbinic opposition to the Essenes (Lieberman, “Light,” 396–400). The rabbis nevertheless reflect legal or cultural traditions often shared with Qumran, though reasons for these parallels are debated (e.g., Baumgarten, “Qumran Studies,” 256; Neusner, “Testimony”; Schiffman, Law).

Conflicts with Sadducees, e.g., Jos. Ant. 18.17; m. Yad. 4:7; t. Ḥag. 3:35; Nid. 5:3; ʾAbot R. Nat. 5 A; 10 B; b. Nid. 33b; Sukkah 48b.

Stanton, New People, 98–102.

Nor is the argument always productive from a pragmatic standpoint, although that is not the issue in question here: in the Majority World, where Jewish-Christian dialogue is often minimal (in some places, far surpassed by Muslim-Christian dialogue) but where the Bible is often widely available, the view that the text is anti-Jewish could be used to support, rather than to repudiate, anti-Judaism.

Among urban aristocrats in Rome and its colonies, see, e.g., Marshall, Enmity, passim.

See, e.g., discussion in Raspe, “Manetho on Exodus.”

Jacobson, “Apion and Sacrifice,” thinks that Apion applied Euripides’s Iphigeneia at Tauris to the Jews. Vogel, “Contra Apionem,” approaches the work differently. Cf. Parkes, Conflict, 16.

See, e.g., Roth, Encyclopedia, 92–93; Grayzel, History of Jews, 314–15, 452; Flannery, Anguish, 98–101, 182; on a more popular level, Dimont, History, 234–35; Brown, Blood, 61–63.

Although disclaiming knowledge of Judaism before his adulthood (Barnard, Justin Martyr, 39), Justin was born in Palestine, in a Gentile area in Samaria (1 Apol. 1; Chadwick, “Defence,” 276n3; Osborn, Justin, 6; Williams, Justin Martyr, ix). Some think he intended his dialogue with Trypho for a Gentile Christian audience (Chadwick, “Defence,” 278), others a Gentile audience wavering between Christianity and Judaism (Nilson, “Addressed”), and others a Jewish audience (Stylianopoulos, Justin, 17–18, 33–44, 169–95).

Frend, “Old Testament,” 149–50.

Justin Dial. 29.

Justin Dial. 11, 123, 135; cf. Barn. 13. See further Richardson, Israel, 9–14; Osborn, Justin, 171–85, esp. 175–78; Bokser, “Justin and Jews,” 99, 208; Schoeps, Argument, 29. Christians were the people promised to the patriarchs (Justin Dial. 119–20). Justin recognized that some Jews excluded other Jews from consideration as Jews (Dial. 80).

Physical Jewish descent does not itself provide salvation (Justin Dial. 140); the ancient righteous under the law are also saved through Christ (Dial. 45); the spirit of prophecy was proof that Christians were God’s people (Dial. 82; just as earlier prophets were filled with the Spirit, Dial. 7).

A trajectory probably also evident in Qur’an 4.154; 5.12–13, 78. Comparing Justin favorably with others, see Barnard, Justin Martyr, 40; Williams, Justin Martyr, xxvi; most favorably, Schoeps, Argument, 88 (the most positive written dialogue for the next fifteen centuries).

For strongly negative views of Justin, cf. Williamson, “Tradition,” 273, 283, 292; Bokser, “Justin and Jews,” 101–2, 211–12. Trypho can appear in a positive light, e.g., intelligent (Dial. 1) and open-minded (10), and he and Justin become friends (8–9, 142). Nevertheless, the Dialogue draws on established anti-Judaic polemic (cf. also Chadwick, “Defence,” 286–87). Although treating the spiritual Sabbath as eternal (Dial. 12; cf. 1 Apol. 67), he envisions circumcision as a sign to mark the Jewish people for suffering (Dial. 16.2, in Williams, Justin Martyr, 32). His language can be harsh (Dial. 12); he assumes that Jewish disbelief is willful (17, 68, 108, 112, 115; for his emphasis on human responsibility vs. determinism, see 1 Apol. 43; cf. Dial. 141); he equates the scribes and Pharisees with all the Jewish people (17). He views Hadrian’s slaughter of Judeans as fulfillment of messianic prophecy (1 Apol. 47; cf. Dial. 16), insensitive to one of the most terrible memories of ancient Jewish history (cf., e.g., Hadrian in Gen. Rab. 10:3; 28:3; 65:21; 78:1; Exod. Rab. 51:5; Lev. Rab. 18:1; Deut. Rab. 3:13; Lam. Rab. 3:23, §8; 3:58–60, §9; Ruth Rab. 3:2; Eccl. Rab. 2:17, §1). When hard-pressed for an argument, Justin appeals to Jerusalem’s destruction as proof (Dial. 51) in a manner irrelevant to the question.

Many scholars conclude that Luke’s polemic is intra-Jewish, e.g., Evans, “Prophecy and Polemic,” 210. Hare, “Rejection in Gospels and Acts,” 35–38, compares some of it with the prophets and considers much of the rest of it intra-Jewish.

Barbi, “Use and Meaning,” 140–42, arguing that normally it is not pejorative but those so described do emerge as adversarial especially toward the end of Acts.

Saldarini, Community, 34–36; Keener, John, 217–18; cf. Tomson, “Israel.”

E.g., Juel, Promise, 118–19; Donfried, “Christology and Salvation”; Jervell, Theology, 4–5 (thinking, I believe correctly, that Jewish Christians remained strong after 70 C.E.).

See Jervell, Luke and People of God, 136–37.

Jervell, Unknown Paul, 13–21 and esp. 26–51. He argues that most converts in Acts in the mass conversions were Jewish (15), but only a few of the many texts he cites in support of this contention come from Paul’s Gentile mission.

Salmon, “Insider,” 81–82. This might be true even if he is a Gentile “God-fearer.”

Juel, Promise, 118–19.

Mason, “Chief Priests,” 152.

Hengel, Acts and History, 63–64. It should be noted, however, that law-observant Jewish Christianity continued in the second century, though in a polarized environment increasingly marginalized, on the one side, by Gentile Christians and, on the other, by rabbinic Judaism (see Pritz, Nazarene Christianity; cf. Justin Dial. 47).

Keener, Matthew, 45–51; idem, John, 172–75, 194–228; idem, Revelation, 38–39, 115–16, 118–19.

Pervo, “Gates.”

Early Christianity fell far short of the form of sectarianism generally suggested for the Essenes (cf. Jos. War 2.119–61).

Again, Christians have been responsible for massive atrocities against Jewish people throughout subsequent history, and Jewish people (who lacked political power) have engaged in few if any against Christians. But in the founding years of the Christian movement (particularly while it remained part of Judaism), early Christians faced persecution from some Jews in much the way that some other radical movements within Judaism had faced persecution. Persecution should not be exaggerated, but first-century cultures governed by local elites did not value tolerance the way we emphasize it in the modern West.

See Keener, John, 195–98, 208–14; Saldarini, Community; Overman, Crisis. Zetterholm, “Judar,” argues that the Jesus movement viewed itself as a Jewish sect with Gentile adherents until the Jewish War (for Paul’s continuing identity within Judaism, cf., e.g., Dahl, Studies, 19; Neuhaus, “Changement”; Bieberstein, “Freiheit”; Bachmann, “Verus Israel”; Frankemölle, “Apostoł Paweł”; Harrington, “Paul the Jew”; Stegner, “Jewish Paul”; Roetzel, Paul, ix). The danger is anachronism regarding categories (Dunn, Partings, 143).

See, e.g., Jervell, Unknown Paul, 16; Donaldson, “Riches,” 98; cf. Rom 11:17–18; 1 Cor 10:1, 32; Eph 4:17; 1 Thess 4:5; 3 John 7. Even outsiders recognized Christianity’s Jewish roots well into the third century (cf. Wilken, “Christians,” 119–23). Brawley, “Commonwealth,” sees Gentiles as gathered into the eschatological commonwealth of Israel.

With his “Christianity without History” (so Burkitt, Gospel History, 289). Marcion’s use (rather, mutilation) of Luke is a counterreading.

See Dahl, “Abraham,” 151, perhaps even too cautiously.

Jervell, Unknown Paul, 19–20.

See esp. Pritz, Nazarene Christianity.

Lucian Peregr. 11 (LCL, 5:13).

See more fully Keener, John, 195–98, 208–14. The Christian movement eventually developed its distinctive more fully than, say, the Qumran sectarians did (if one may judge by the distinctly “sectarian” works in their respective libraries; Stökl Ben Ezra, “Weighing”), but the evidence for this comes from later than our period.

Johnson, Acts, 8, though perhaps importing too much of the thought of Romans. Cf. similar apologetic questions in Witherington, Acts, 64–65; Brawley, Luke-Acts and Jews, 158–59. Cf. Haenchen, Acts, 100, who attributes the breach to Gentile failure in law-keeping.

Spencer, Acts, 81, also noting that excepting Acts 7:52, “no uniquely ‘Christian’ elements appear anywhere else in the speech.”

Donaldson, “Sectarian Nature.”

As often observed, e.g., Horsley, “Assembly,” 373–75; see further discussion in our prolegomenon, sect. 8.

E.g., Porton, “Diversity”; Groh, “Jews and Christians,” 87–89; Boccacini, “Multiple Judaisms”; Luke, “Society Divided”; Keener, John, 181–85. This is not to deny considerable commonality on central concerns (Sanders, Jesus to Mishnah, 255–56).

See Goodman, “Nerva.” This is not to say that the Jewish status of God-fearers remained unclear (Levinskaya, Diaspora Setting, 3, against Goodman).

For this view in Acts, see esp. Squires, “Acts 8.4–12.25”; for Gentile believers as “proselytes” already in Paul, see Donaldson, Paul and Gentiles, 236–47; idem, “Riches,” 98. This is the usual perspective of “Messianic Judaism” today, but this phrase is also anachronistic for the first century because the Jesus movement was not the only messianic movement, though it was the only one that demonstrated longevity (and has “risen again”).

For more detail, see, e.g., Brawley, Luke-Acts and Jews, 133–54; idem, “Borderlines” (applying Acts’ “open-ended” conclusion also to the Jewish response); also Jervell, Luke and People of God, 44, 49; Nanos, Mystery, 268–69. Because of this diverse response, O’Toole, “Treatment of Jews,” warns that it is unfair to depict Luke’s negative approach specifically toward the hostile respondents in terms of modern anti-Judaism.

See, e.g., Rosner, “Biblical History,” 71; Jervell, “Paul in Acts: Theology.”

Barrett, Acts, 2:xcvii, though noting (xcviii) that many Jewish people were rejecting Jesus’s messiahship in this book.

Cassidy, “Opponents.”

See, e.g., Jervell, Theology, 4; Botermann, “Heidenapostel”; cf. Jankowski, “Messianische Realpolitik?”

Brawley, “Paul in Acts,” 143–44; Jervell would agree with much of this. Against expectations of a dichotomy, Bovon, Studies, 31, notes that of early Christian documents, Luke-Acts is the most positively disposed both to Israel and to the Gentile mission.

Most scholars recognize that Luke does not condemn believing Jews (e.g., Salmon, “Insider,” 81–82). By contrast, Tyson, “Problem,” 137, thinks that the Jerusalem Christians function in the narrative especially as Paul’s enemies.

Setzer, Responses, 44–82. Cf. Foakes-Jackson and Lake, “Internal Evidence of Acts,” 183; for positive as well as negative Jewish responses, see, e.g., Brawley, Luke-Acts and Jews, 156.

Gill, “Character.” Theophrastus provided an entire essay delineating (often in humorous ways) various character types. Many ancients viewed character as inborn, not changed, e.g., Pindar Olympian 13.12; also 11.19–20; Eurip. Alcmeon in Corinth frg. 75 (Stob. 4.30.2); Antigone frg. 166 (Stob. 4.30.1); Archelaus frg. 232 (Stob. 4.29.44); Dictys frg. 333 (Stob. 4.30.5); Meleager frg. 520 (Stob. 4.22.131); Phoenix frg. 810; also frg. 1027; 1067 (Stob. 4.29.47); 1068 (Stob. 4.30.3); frg. 1113 (Stob. 4.29.35); Lucian Nigr. 37; cf. Arius Did. Epit. 2.7.11k, p. 80.26–31; 82.5–18; Quint. Decl. 268.6. Others, however, recognized that character changed (Val. Max. 6.9.pref.–6.9.9; cf. 2 Chr 24:17–22), or accepted both nature and nurture (some Stoics in Arius Did. Epit. 2.7.11m, p. 86.21–34).

For characterization in modern literary theory, see Gowler, Host, Guest, 29–75; in ancient narratives, see 77–176. For plausible character development in a narrative, cf. Herod in Josephus (though some of this may reflect his accurate source, Nicolaus of Damascus).

Thompson, “Contrasting Portraits,” 343–44. On contrasting characters, see further Shuler, Genre, 50; Keener, Matthew, 97; in fuller detail, idem, John, 916–17, 966–69, 1183–84. They could, of course, be “rounded” (discussion in John, 216–17).

Gaventa, “Comment(ary)ing,” also contends that the theme of “resisting” God is not limited to Jewish leaders but applies to Gentile leaders such as Felix and sometimes even to the church (e.g., Ananias and Sapphira; and even Peter himself in the Cornelius narrative). In this approach, the divide is not just between believers and unbelievers but ultimately between God and humanity.

Harnack, Acts, xxiv–xxv, regarding Luke as more anti-Jewish than Paul (Rom 11:25–32) but less than other writers.

Pace Jack T. Sanders, “Redaction in Luke XV.11–32”; idem, “Parable and Anti-Semitism”; cited by E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 386n31, as the basis for his own claim of Luke’s “anti-Pharisaism” (180).

See esp. Darr, Character Building, 85–126.

Mason, “Chief Priests,” 134–42.

Tyson, “Opposition in Luke” (also noting the improved image in Acts). Hakola, “Pharisees,” also notes that the Pharisees appear more favorably in Acts, noting that there they are relatively positive because of new standards of comparison; Hakola helpfully grounds the apparent inconsistency in the consistency of social identity theory (see 194–200).

On this redactional improvement, see also Ziesler, “Luke and Pharisees.”

Brawley, Luke-Acts and Jews, 84–106, esp. 105–6. Instead of reading Acts primarily in light of the earlier negative portrait (so Darr, Character Building, 43, as summarized in Spencer, “Approaches,” 404), we should thus also read earlier material in light of Acts (as in the shift in focus from heritage to mission).

Gowler, Host, Guest, 177–296.

Ibid., 301–5. (Though, against the view that he portrays Pharisees favorably to legitimate Christianity, see Kingsbury, “Pharisees in Luke-Acts.”)

Marmorstein, “Attitudes,” 383–84, tendentiously accepts all the early Christian evidence for positive relations (e.g., Acts 5:34–39) but doubts all evidence for persecution—mainly because he argues in terms of Jews and Christians, not (more specifically) Sadducees and messianic Jews.

Bruce, Acts³, 26, citing Acts 24:14.

Mason, “Chief Priests,” 142–47; Brawley, Luke-Acts and Jews, 107–32.

See, e.g., Jos. Life 216; 1QpHab IX, 4–5; Keener, Matthew, 613; more fully, comment on Acts 23:2.

Luke’s first four uses of λαός (Luke 1:10, 17, 21, 68) appear in four different cases; this fits an oratorial method for emphasizing a key term (Parsons, “Progymnasmata,” 60).

Granted, this is not an exclusively Lukan concern (Mark 11:12, 18, 42; 14:2), but Luke emphasizes it; e.g., Mark mentions fear of the people (Mark 11:32), but Luke adds the concern for stoning (Luke 20:6; this is a familiar, though not exclusively, Lukan image, 13:34; Acts 7:58–59; 14:5, 19; cf. John 8:5–7, 59; 10:31–33; 11:8).

With, e.g., Danker, New Age, 228; cf. George, “Israël.” Luke charges Jerusalem’s elite, not all Jews, with Jesus’s unjust execution (see further comment at Acts 2:23; 3:17; and esp. Weatherly, Responsibility; Matera, “Responsibility for Death”).

Cf. Josephus’s similar theodicy in explaining the Judean-Roman war and the temple’s destruction, or the similar explanations of Samuel-Kings and the Chronicler regarding the first temple’s destruction and Israel’s exile.

Paul views this rejection as God’s providential plan to provide Gentiles a chance for life (Rom 11:11, 30–31), but in Paul’s theology, God could appoint rebellious human agents precisely to accomplish his purposes (9:17).

Jervell, Luke and People of God; for earlier sources, see idem, “Israel und Heidenvölken”; for his summary of the current state of the question, see idem, “Faithfulness.” Some warn that today’s correct emphasis on Acts’ Greco-Roman context risks obscuring its Jewish setting, which Luke himself finds so central (Tyson, “History to Rhetoric,” 38–39, 41); this is a potential danger even in a commentary such as this one, which addresses Luke’s Diaspora context at length (because it requires more exposition for modern readers) yet treats his central theology (without neglecting it) in less detail.

Turner, Power, 307–8.

E.g., Jervell, Theology, passim; Danker, New Age, 228. Cazeaux, Actes (e.g., 338–39), offers a very different approach, suggesting that Paul, unlike Peter in the first half of the book, rejects Israel in favor of the mission to the nations and comes to the right approach only at the end of the book. (He connects this with the overemphasis on the resurrection at the expense of the passion, the passion being emphasized in the first part of the book, e.g., 339.) While Cazeaux is right to see emphases on both heritage and mission in Acts, however, I believe that the portrayal of Paul’s mission is much more favorable (cf. 13:47) and that Luke supports even his appeal to Caesar (cf. Keener, “Apologetic”).

Carras, “Observant Jews,” 704–5.

Ibid., 697–703.

Ibid., 708, compares the characterization of observant Jews in Josephus.

See a nuanced discussion in Talbert, Romans, 269–74. The status of Messianic Judaism has remained a critical sticking point in Jewish-Christian dialogue, but Messianic Judaism may resemble most closely the earliest Jesus movement’s situation vis-à-vis Israel’s heritage and offers a potential alternative to the impasse in dialogue between those who insist that everyone should consider their truth claims about Jesus and those who, in light of intervening centuries of Jewish-Christian conflict, view the acceptance of such premises as ethnic and religious suicide. In a sense, it may offer both groups a chance for dialogue by revisiting the original schism through a group that bridges the most essential commitments of both camps. For some more positive Jewish perspectives on the movement, see, e.g., Harris-Shapiro, Messianic Judaism, 166–89; Cohn-Sherbok, Messianic Judaism, 169–213 (esp. 174, 203–13); more concisely, idem, “Introduction,” xiii–xiv.

For the possible significance of sequence, cf. Luke 1:3–4; but scholars debate whether Luke intends order in this sense.

Johnson, Acts, 9. Moessner, “End(s)ings,” 219, thinks that Acts’ conclusion marks the inauguration of the “times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24), allowing the Gentile mission without requiring one to start with Israel (he argues [p. 218] that the narrative’s conclusion ushers in a new situation, as in the conclusion of Diodorus Siculus’s Library of History).

Cf. Foakes-Jackson and Lake, “Internal Evidence of Acts,” 183. This is not to imply that Luke would necessarily, in an ideal situation, attribute more obstinacy to Israel than to others; presumably, he shares Paul’s belief in general human depravity (Rom 1–3; cf. Acts 14:16; 17:27, 30), which is revealed in special ways among those with greatest exposure to the standard of truth (Rom 2:12–29).

Tannehill, “Rejection,” esp. 98–99, 101; idem, Story, 105–24; cf. idem, “Tragic Story.” Against this reading, see Cook, “Mission,” 122–23 (citing Luke 11:50; 20:17; Acts 4:11); Sanders, “Jewish People,” 74–75 (who, unfortunately, sees them as villains); Tuckett, Luke, 61 (arguing that readers will sympathize more naturally with Luke’s protagonists).

Ray, Irony, passim (introduced, 8–9). Ironically, “it is the Jewish rejection of the divine plan that actually brings about its accomplishment” (9); note his comments on Acts 13:27 (155–58). From a different approach, Dawsey, Voice, addresses irony in Luke’s Gospel (especially in the characters’ voices’ differing from that of Jesus and the narrator, but see Padilla, Speeches, 11).

Cohen, Maccabees, 167.

Jervell, Theology, 4–5; idem, Apostelgeschichte, 92, 629. Le Cornu, Acts, xxx, argues that a primary purpose of Acts is “to explain the relationship between the Jewish and gentile segments of the early community.” Some connect Luke’s use of “epochs” in salvation history to his appropriation of elements of the Jewish symbolic world to provide identity for Christians (Wolter, “Epochengeschichte,” 284); some also portray Christology as a key factor in constituting God’s people, hence welcoming Gentiles (cf. Schröter, “Heiden”).

Turner, Gifts, 56.

E.g., Stowers, “Synagogue in Theology of Acts”: God-fearing Gentiles who follow the minimal Noahide laws (Acts 15:20) join Israel’s remnant, supplanting only the unbelieving portion of Israel. The remnant of Israel is called to bring the rest of Israel back to the Way (13:47; cf. Isa 49:5–6; Moessner, “Fulfillment,” 46–50).

Later rabbis polemicized against some Gentiles who claimed to be the true Israel (e.g., Song Rab. 7:3, §3; Pesiq. Rab. 5:1) and against some “schismatics” who called Israel apostate (b. Yebam. 102b); cf. Herford, Christianity, 247–51, 290–91; Neusner, Beginning, 12. Cf. b. Sanh. 44a, where the rabbis must argue that Israel’s election can never be revoked.

E.g., 1Q20 XV, 9; 1Q22; 4Q163 6–7 II, 4–5 (possibly); 4Q390 1 7–9; 4Q501, line 3; 1 En. 91:7; 93:9; 3 En. 48A:5–6; 4 Ezra 5:1–2; 14:16–18; Test. Iss. 6:1; Test. Dan 6:6; 7:3 MSS; Test. Naph. 4:1; Mart. Is. 2:4; Matt 24:12; 2 Thess 2:3; 1 Tim 4:1; Sipre Deut. 318.1.10; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 5:9.

Cf. 1QM XVII, 6–8. Thus most scholars believe that Qumran sectarians regarded themselves as the true Israel (Jeremias, “Qumran Texts,” 69; Fritsch, Community, 74; Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 117; Flusser, Judaism, 49; Gärtner, Temple, 13; with careful nuancing, cf. Sanders, Paul and Judaism, 242–49; idem, Law and People, 175–76). This has been claimed (e.g., Jeremias, Jerusalem, 246, 248; idem, Theology, 171–72; Goppelt, Judaism, 33, 52–53) and disclaimed (esp. Sanders, Paul and Judaism, 152ff.) for the Pharisees; it was surely true of the Samaritans (Bowman, Documents, ii).

On which see, e.g., Flannery, Anguish; Parkes, Conflict; Tyson, Luke, Judaism, and Scholars, 1–11. The greatest risk, however, comes in de-Judaizing earliest Christianity, a tool that Nazi theologians used to justify anti-Semitism (see Heschel, “De-Judaization”).

Meeks, “Birth,” 19, suggests that even “the adversus Ioudaeos literature” of early church fathers “looks much uglier when transposed from a minority group that sees itself under attack into a triumphant church backed by imperial power.”

Räisänen, “Redemption,” 94–114; cf. Sanders, “Who Is a Jew?” Marshall, “Acts,” 600–601, summarizes Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 628, as thinking that Acts rejects a Rom 11–style eschatological conversion of Israel; Schneider, Apostelgeschichte, 2:419, and Pesch, Apostelgeschichte, 2:310, as allowing for individual conversions; Barrett, Acts, 1246 (cf. also 2:xcvii–xcviii), as viewing the data as complex; and Marguerat, Historian, 221–30, as viewing it as deliberately ambivalent.

Cf., e.g., 1QS I, 22–24; CD IV, 13, 16; XIX, 14.

Dunn, Partings, 143.

Tannehill, Acts, 3 (though Tannehill personally denies the need to continue this mission today).

Moessner, “End(s)ings,” 219, thinks that this divided Jewish reaction (Acts 28:25) marks a shift in Luke’s narrative toward the future, an improvement over previous hostility; but cf. the division in 19:9.

Tyson, “Problem,” 137, rightly holding that Luke is dissatisfied with partial acceptance, also thinks (I believe, incorrectly) that even the Jerusalem Christians are Paul’s enemies and that by Acts 28 the Jewish mission has failed. For the close correspondence between 28:16–31 and Rom 11, see Litwak, “Views.”

See Tiede, “Glory,” 33–34; cf. idem, “Contending.” For God’s not rejecting Israel permanently in Luke’s Gospel, see also Chen, Father, 214.

See Witherington, Acts, 73–74; Soards, Speeches, 206; cf. Le Cornu, Acts, xxxv, 1522.

Johnson, Acts, 250. Watson, Gentiles, 344, suggests that Paul discovered the Gentile mission through uncircumcised God-fearers’ receptivity and Jewish rejection in the synagogues. This pattern does fit Acts and Paul, though I believe that the God-fearers’ very receptivity (and Jewish hostility) suggests a prior, distinctive pro-Gentile element already in the Christian Paul’s message.

Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 172–73, arguing that this is not anti-Judaism.

Some scholars view it as ambivalent—no longer clear that all Israel’s people will turn yet inviting them (Marguerat, Histoire, 333; idem, Historian, 152–54, 230). See further discussion at Acts 28:17–31.

See also, e.g., Brawley, “Promises and Jews,” 296.

See Tannehill, “Story of Israel,” 339, arguing that Paul’s anguish in Acts 28 is also Luke’s anguish. One view relatively rare today is that God temporarily rejected Israel during the Gentile period (Luke 21:24), Acts being a transitional period between dispensations (Frost, Revelation, 60).

Theologically, Luke moves from heritage to mission but does so in such a way that he seeks to retain the centrality of heritage (hence explaining, based on Isaiah, even the closing scene of Israel’s division, Acts 28:25–27).

Johnson, Acts, 11.

Even mission to the nations never excludes Israel (e.g., Acts 9:15; 26:20, 23).

For a literature review up till 1983, see Bovon, Theologian, 78–108 (with a chronological bibliography, 78–83); for a more recent but briefer survey of scholars’ treatment of Luke’s use of Scripture, see Pao, Isaianic Exodus, 5–17 (with a focus on Isaiah, 10–17).

This anti-Judaism became most virulent in its gnostic forms, sometimes including a rejection of the OT. For comments on genuinely supersessionist vs. nonsupersessionist approaches to Israel’s Scripture (viewing Paul as the latter), see Hays, Conversion, 176.

Although it has often been identified in Matthew, John, and Revelation toward the end of the first century and these works include much harsher polemic than Luke-Acts, they are also more pervasively Jewish. I addressed some of these questions at greater length in, e.g., Keener, Matthew, 45–51, 535–36, 612–16, 670–71; idem, John, 171–232 (esp. 214–27); idem, Revelation, 115–16, 118–19.

With, e.g., Pao, Isaianic Exodus, 4. Steyn, Septuagint Quotations, 26–31, lists twenty-five introductory formulas introducing twenty-seven quotations, in addition to nine quotations without introductions (not including allusions). For classification by degrees of usage (summary references; citations; indirect citations, esp. in Acts 7 and 13:17–25; allusions; echoes; typical LXX language), see Marshall, “Acts,” 518–19; for classification by function (history; promise and fulfillment; pattern and type; principles; characterization), see 519–20.

Barrett, “Luke/Acts,” 231 (as cited in Marshall, “Acts,” 513).

Cf. the extensive biblical literacy presupposed for Paul’s implied audience, treated, e.g., in Hays, Conversion, 23, 49.

See Alexander, Context, 251–52.

The traditional scholarly dichotomy between Judaic and Hellenistic influences was used in the service of anti-Judaism or sometimes for Christian apologetic (see Meeks, “Birth”; Martin, “Dichotomy”); today it is probably maintained more often only as a result of overspecialization in NT scholars’ training. For Luke’s Hellenistic context, see, e.g., Plümacher, Lukas, 30–31.

For the consensus, see Schmidt, “Influences,” 60.

Jervell, “Future,” 104–9. Luke’s (and other extant first-century Christian writers’) literary “canon” was the Jewish Scriptures (see Wall, “Intertextuality,” 544). Thus even many scholars working especially with Hellenistic sources recognize that most NT authors’ primary cultural sphere was Jewish; e.g., for Paul’s contemporaries, “the cultural authorities Paul appeals to [esp. Moses] would be sufficient to identify him as ‘Jewish’” (Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 127).

These were surely more often literary topics or themes, or sometimes allusions to a particular celebrated character (e.g., Socrates in Acts 17:19 and perhaps 4:19; 5:29), than to specific Greek texts, though the latter cannot be ruled out a priori.

Cf. allusions to Greek literature even in the rabbis (even, at times, to Homer; Manns, “Source de l’aggadah”). Collins, Mark, 1, suggests that Mark may have also assimilated Jesus to Hellenistic heroes and philosophers.

Contrast, e.g., the sort of clear allusions found in Philo Plant. 129; Sib. Or. 3.814 (referring to Circe, Hom. Od. 10.210; Virg. Aen. 7.19–20); even in matters of Greek style, e.g., a Homeric phrase in Jos. Ant. 1.222. Cf. also the allusion to Diomedes’s capture of the Palladion in a cameo from Jerusalem (Rahmani, “Cameo”).

Marshall, “Acts,” 513 (citing Steyn, Septuagint Quotations, 230).

Marshall, “Acts,” 527.

Cf. the similar comments of Koester, “Spectrum,” esp. 14–15, on the Fourth Gospel. Comic dramatists could cite and parody tragic plays of their era, evoking common recognition (e.g., Menander Aspis 426–29, 432).

Cf. Hays, “Category or Methodology” (on Isaiah, see esp. Pao, Isaianic Exodus, passim, mostly quite persuasively); for a definition of “echoes,” see Hays, Echoes, 25–33; Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 395. Some others doubt that ancient hearers would have recognized contexts (on Paul’s audiences, Tuckett, “Paul and Ethics”; cf. discussion in Stanley, “Pearls”; cf. also the response in Abasciano, “Diamonds”). The text-analytical approach to intertextuality, sensitive to the needs of philologists, focuses on marked and deliberate “relations between a text and literary pre-texts” (instead of opening the text to infinite associations; Bendlin, “Intertextuality,” 873–74).

Cf. Luke 24:44; Acts 3:18, though these, presumably, include the narratives of “prophet-historians” outside the Torah.

So Dion. Hal. Demosth. 46; Isaeus 14.

Only the wealthiest members of his audience would have had the leisure to share a fully literary education (cf. Gray, “Class and Classics”). Probably, Paul expected at least some Jewish Christian teachers in the congregations (especially in Rome; cf. Rom 16:3–5, 7) to understand, but it is not surprising that some people encountered his teaching as obscure (2 Pet 3:16).

See, e.g., Trapp, Maximus, xxxv–xxxviii (the index to Trapp’s translation of Maximus of Tyre includes about three columns of Homer, two of Plato, and three of others put together, and Maximus was a Middle Platonist); Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, lxxxvii–lxxxix; multiple allusions in Lucian Men. 1 (where the dialogue makes clear that the allusions are expected to be recognized). Lucian True Story 1.2–3 declares that he expects his audience to recognize the unnamed authors he parodies.

Explicit in Lucian Fisherman 6. In contrast to biblical exegesis but presupposing no less familiarity with the text, critiquing and emending Homer “became a kind of ‘literary sport’” by the early empire (Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, xli, xlix–l, lx–lxxvi).

Pervo, Profit, 84, noting Homeric allusions in Chariton. The principle extends beyond novels to other nontechnical works.

Though some house churches (cf., e.g., 1 Tim 4:13), like many early synagogues (cf., e.g., Acts 13:15; 2 Cor 3:14; Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.175), perhaps including house synagogues, probably did acquire some scrolls.

Fitzmyer, Acts, 91–92.

Black, Rhetoric of Gospel, 128. On the citation of ancient texts as authorities, see, e.g., Anderson, Glossary, 67. Greco-Roman authors tend to cite Homer the way Paul cites Scripture (Stanley, “Paul and Homer”); that neither Paul nor Luke does so suggests the narrower primary canon whose authority they and their audiences share.

Homer was the foundation of the Greek literary “canon”; see comment on Acts 17:28. The focus on select primary texts of antiquity fostered their intertextual comparison (Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 234 [s.v. “Intertextuality,” 233–34]).

Rosner, “Biblical History,” 76, noting Van Seters’s location of this in the Deuteronomistic History (1 Sam 8:8; 10:18–19; 12:8–11).

The variants are many (with, e.g., Barr, “Paul and LXX”), but I speak of the LXX “family” of readings here and elsewhere because of the problem’s complexity. Marshall, “Acts,” 516, notes that the consensus is that Luke’s usual form is close to Alexandrinus, diverging mainly in the Psalms (perhaps because of liturgical adaptations); he may have sometimes “cited loosely from memory.”

Witherington, Acts, 123–24; and esp. Fitzmyer, Acts, 91, following E. Richard and pace M. Wilcox.

Hanson, Utterances, 78–89, argues that Luke took most OT material directly from his sources (probable with regard to his use of Mark; not necessarily in Acts).

Bock, Proclamation, 271. It has been argued differently for Acts 15:17, but see our comment on that passage for the basic sense there.

Kilpatrick, “Quotations in Acts,” for at least seven passages.

Cf. Hatina, “Consolations”; Stanley, “4QTanhumim.” Many see in Qumran testimonia a confirmation of J. Rendel Harris’s testimonia theory or of something like it (Allegro, “References,” 186–87, though noting that 4Q175 was more eschatological than messianic; Fitzmyer, Essays, 59–89, esp. 88); 4Q175–177 is eschatological but 4Q175 has only about two messianic texts. For messianic testimonia in rabbinic literature, cf. Urbach, Sages, 1:686; for classical quotations, see comment on Acts 17:28.

Cf. Williams, “Catena.”

For challenges to testimonia elsewhere in the NT, see, e.g., Stendahl, School of Matthew, 207–17; cf. Lindars, Apologetic, 13–14; Longenecker, Exegesis, 89–90; Ellis, “New Testament Uses Old,” 201.

Since Luke probably wishes to teach hermeneutics in speeches such as Stephen’s, filling in the summaries in tantalizing verses such as Luke 24:27, 44, it will not do to simply assume that Luke and his audience shared familiarity with the same testimony books (although they undoubtedly shared familiarity with the more commonly used texts, such as Ps 2 or Isa 53).

Marshall, “Acts,” 518, citing (apparently favorably) the position of Albl, Scripture, 198–200, and suggesting that most of Luke’s Scripture arguments thus reflect earlier Christian tradition. Because Jewish exegetical techniques and contextual associations in quoted texts left implicit by Luke appear in various speeches (e.g., 13:16–41; 20:18–35), I do believe at least that he often depends on prior material, summarized in his work.

See esp. Strauss, Messiah.

In addition to Isaiah’s usefulness, it could appeal to wider cultural usage, at least among prophetic movements. Fabry, “Jesaja-Rolle,” views Isaiah as one of Qumran’s favorite books; writing earlier, Fritsch, Community, 45, considered it the most widely attested book at Qumran, even more than the Pentateuch and Psalms.

Pao, Isaianic Exodus, 5; cf. 93–95.

See ibid., 37; on Isa 40:1–11 (esp. 40:3–5), see 37–69.

See the discussion in Pao, Isaianic Exodus, 70–84.

Ibid., 96–101.

Ibid., 101–9.

Ibid., 84–86.

Ibid., 91–96.

Pao (ibid., 111) also mentions Isaianic themes he finds prominent in Acts, some of them stronger than others: Israel’s restoration (found elsewhere, but the allusions do point especially to Isaiah’s influence; he treats this topic further, 111–46), God’s word (this theme is pervasive in Scripture and hence less clear by itself), anti-idol polemic (very likely), and salvation offered to the Gentiles (certainly).

Ibid., 109. On Luke’s application of OT and especially Isaianic “Spirit” passages, see also Ma, “Empowerment,” esp. 40 (Jordan May brought this article to my attention).

As well as gender inclusion and “all flesh” including Gentiles who would receive the Spirit (via the Isa 57:19 allusion in Acts 2:39), hence the gift going beyond the original witnesses.

Although “typological application” is treated below, I do not find many striking parallels with Moses or David in Luke’s narratives (in contrast, e.g., to Matthew; see Allison, Moses). Parallels with Elijah and Elisha (Luke 4:25–27) seem more compelling (see discussion at Acts 1:6–9); such parallels fit Luke’s “parallel lives” approach (see below).

Likewise, no one thinks that Luke invented Pilate or Herod to fulfill Ps 2:1–2, by which Luke interprets them in Acts 4:25–26.

E.g., Soards, Speeches, 201 (emphasizing their rhetorical function); Tomson, “Scriptures.” Just as Luke has in mind the broader story in Isaiah (Pao, Isaianic Exodus, 251), he reads in light of the broader canonical story. Although Luke’s work cannot strictly constitute an epic (not being poetry; see , ), it is a foundation story, and its open ending shares with epics a connection to a larger story (see Troftgruben, “Ending,” esp. 187, 220–21, 232–44). Later generations of Christians (as attested in patristic sources) may have embraced Acts as canonical precisely because it connected the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the apostolic church so effectively (see helpfully Smith, “Structure”).

For various approaches to the fulfillment of promises in Acts, see Powell, Acts, 40–42. Some even find affirmation of biblical fulfillment in Luke’s narratives in Luke’s preface (Mallen, Reading, 164, 195), though the verb in Luke 1:1 is not the typical one for this function. In a very different sort of way, Polybius emphasized the importance of continuity through linking causes (Polyb. 3.32.2).

See Bock, Proclamation, 275–77; Ray, Irony, 69–91. Talbert, “Promise and Fulfillment,” similarly argues that promise and fulfillment constitute a major theme in Luke-Acts, though not (pace some scholars) the major one. Prophecies often concern Jesus’s passion and the Gentile mission (Ray, Irony, 83–91), key issues for which Luke must also (given the view of Luke’s apologetic already articulated) offer special apologetic support. Müller, “Reception,” finds more direct prediction in Luke-Acts than in Matthew, though unnecessarily inferring from this a second-century date for Luke’s work.

See esp. Peterson, “Fulfilment and Purpose” (whose view of Luke’s theme rightly includes both OT and contemporary prophecies); also Squires, “Plan,” 38. On the divine-necessity theme in ancient writers, See comment on .

See Squires, Plan, 15–17; Balch, “Acts as Historiography.” Ancestor stories may prefigure or foretell a coming king in Dionysius (idem, “Genre,” 14–16).

For Josephus, see Squires, Plan, 18–20, 46–51, 61–66; Josephus often followed models such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (see Attridge, History in Josephus, passim). Balch, “Acts as Historiography,” critiques Schmidt, “Historiography of Acts,” for focusing on Deuteronomic historiography. Most today allow both; see Schmidt, “Influences,” 60.

Holladay, “Acts and Fragments,” though contending that they (as well as Acts) share a common heroic characterization of central biblical heroes.

Wright, People of God, 373–75 (comparing the focus on Jesus’s death in Luke-Acts to Jerusalem’s fall in Josephus).

See Kurz, “Promise and Fulfillment.”

Bock, “Scripture and Realisation,” 47. On divine necessity’s role, see also Peterson, “Fulfillment and Purpose.”

On its realized eschatology, see Aune, Cultic Setting.

For extant, though post-Lukan, evidence for such polemic, see the discussion in Keener, John, 194–214.

The initial and dominant voice of opposition quoting Scripture starts, in fact, with the devil’s out-of-context use in Luke 4:10–11 (contrasting with Jesus’s contextual use in 4:4, 8, 12). Granted, a scribe can quote Scripture wisely (10:27), but he is not really antagonistic (cf. 10:28); crowds quote it, but as the adulation of disciples (19:37–38).

Philip is not cited as quoting in Acts 8:32–33, but he explains it (8:35).

Beyond this are all the Scripture arguments that are mentioned but not directly quoted, e.g., those of Apollos (Acts 18:28) and Paul (28:23) and global citations (e.g., 3:18, 21, 24; 10:43; 13:27; 24:14; 26:22, 27).

Johnson, Acts, 12; also Smith, “Gospels,” 8–14. Litwak, Echoes, in fact, argues that (32) Luke’s primary application of Scripture was not proof from prophecy “but to show continuity between the events recorded in the Scriptures and the events surrounding Jesus and his first followers.”

Litwak, Echoes, 206. Some earlier Greek historians (like Thucydides and Xenophon) envisioned their narratives as picking up where their predecessors left off (Darbo-Peschanski, “Origin,” 33–34; Brown, Historians, 91–92; see comment below).

E.g., the retellings within Luke-Acts; see Maloney, Narration of Works, 190 (see, e.g., the sample report in Luke 24:33–35 [pp. 37–41]).

More often, however, events of the interim time simply reflect patterns and principles: prophesied persecution of Jesus (Acts 4:25–28) was applicable also to his agents (4:29); Jesus’s mission as the servant (8:32–33; cf. Luke 4:18) is applicable to his agents (Acts 13:47); rejection of the word continued to apply (7:51; 28:25–27).

Rosner, “Biblical History,” 82.

See, e.g., Green, “Problem of Beginning”; Moessner and Tiede, “Introduction,” 2; Moessner, “Poetics,” 114; Gaventa, Acts, 51; and esp. Kurz, “Promise and Fulfillment”; for a survey of views, see Green and McKeever, Historiography, 45–46.

Rosner, “Biblical History,” 82. Although doubting that Luke sees himself as writing Scripture, Walaskay, Acts, 6–7, suggests that Luke imitates “biblical Greek” in much of his work to draw attention to the events he narrates that fulfill biblical promises.

1QM XV, 5–6 may use a scriptural quotation formula for an extrabiblical text, but this is uncertain (the text is reconstructed).

See the cautions in Witherington, Acts, 35–39, who emphasizes Acts’ genre as Hellenistic history.

See, e.g., James, “God Came to England,” 18 (on Bede); Smith, “Wide Angles,” 20 (on medieval chroniclers). Luke did not begin this practice; centuries before him, Xen. Hell. 1.1.1 shows that one historian could pick up where another left off.

On “inspired histories,” see esp. Hall, Histories, 171–208. Gentile historians, too, could claim to write at divine initiative (Dio Cass. 73.23, in Matthews, “Emperor and Historians,” 295). For a more detailed argument than here, cf. Keener, John, 115–22, on the probability that the writer of the Fourth Gospel believed that work to be a form of inspired historical biography. Polyb. 29.21.7, 9 speaks of a treatise so accurate that it was prophetically inspired, but this may be hyperbole.