Conclusion
In this introductory chapter I have tried to define my primary approach and limitations. This commentary’s primary focus is on the social, historical, and rhetorical dimensions of the text; it also seeks to examine (in view of Acts’ apparent genre) the degree to which Luke’s depiction of events coheres with the real world of the periods he depicts. Likewise, although no attempt to forestall criticism will prove comprehensive, I have sought to answer in advance especially the objections to which responses to previous publications have accustomed me. I offer this work in the hope that a range of readers will find the information and at least some of the perspectives contained herein useful to their studies.
For one example of the latter, cf. the detailed semiotic approach (using the methodology of A. J. Greimas) in Martin, Lecture sémiotique. While I respect such approaches, they stand outside my purview.
E.g., Keener, Corinthians; idem, Revelation; idem, Matthew (1997); idem, Romans; in contrast to my heavier academic works such as Matthew; John; and Historical Jesus. Some complain about scholars writing too widely in the NT (cf. one response in Bird and Keener, “Generalist Scholars”), but I believe that demonstrated facility both with other NT narratives and with Paul can be useful when one approaches Acts. It would be odd if, emphasizing the necessary contexts of early Judaism and broader Greco-Roman settings for reading Luke-Acts, we neglected the particularly close context of early Christianity.
Pelikan rightly notes that “commentary” is a time-honored genre for theological reflection (Acts, 25); evident in Origen, it was widespread by the late fourth century (Gaca and Welborn, “Receptions,” iii).
A complaint offered also by other commentators, e.g., France, Gospel of Matthew, 1; Das, Debate, xi.
See also Keener, “Inverted Guilt”; idem, “Tongues”; idem, “Asiarchs”; idem, “Fever”; idem, “Rhetorical Techniques.” I address various historical questions relevant for genre also in, e.g., “Official”; idem, “Athens”; idem, “Plausibility”; idem, “Troops”; and engage more social-science approaches in, e.g., “Possession”; idem, “Comparisons”; to a degree in idem, “Case.”
On Luke’s apologetic for Paul, see, e.g., Keener, “Apologetic.” Gentiles in Luke’s audience would have understood Paul partly as a philosopher (see, e.g., Wilken, “Christians,” 107–10; idem, “Social Interpretation of Apologetics”), though the biblically literate among them (the center of Luke’s ideal audience) also had access to the “prophet” category.
See also Keener, “Vote.”
Witherington, Acts, 59, following Mellor, Tacitus, 70.
Polyb. 6.11.7–8 (LCL, 2:294–95); he advises historians not to focus on what others have treated sufficiently (15.36.10).
Noting the lack of grammatical and lexical focus, see, e.g., Doriani, “Review,” 34.
Thesaurus linguae graecae, described online: http://www.tlg.uci.edu; Duke Papyrus Archive, online: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus (including the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri).
These are the sorts of activities some professors at more prestigious institutions might safely assign to research assistants or graduate seminars (neither of which have I had available during the writing of this commentary, apart from students I earlier hired to type my own earlier handwritten research). Nevertheless, even supervising such a project would be highly labor-intensive, just as my own approach to research has proved in its different way. I am not able to master both approaches in the years allotted to this project, though others building on this generation of work will, it is hoped, do so.
In addition to some of the stronger general commentaries on the Greek text (such as Barrett and Bruce, among others), note Parsons and Culy, Acts, focusing especially on this contribution.
For brief annotated bibliographies for those exploring this discipline further with regard to Luke-Acts, see, e.g., Green and McKeever, Historiography, 85–88; Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 12–15; discussion in Schröter, “Actaforschung 2”; Grässer, Forschungen, 137–39, 157–79 (esp. 157–60). For older studies, see Mattill and Mattill, Bibliography, 95–121, §§1182–1560; Martini, “Tendances”; Bammel, “Text”; Grässer, Forschungen, 89–96; briefly, Wikenhauser, Apostelgeschichte, 23. For some recent studies, see those in Nicklas and Tilly, Acts as Church History; also Dupont-Roc, “Tradition textuelle”; for a discussion of recent perspectives, see Bovon, Studies, 24–26; for brief discussions, see, e.g., Weiser, Apostelgeschichte, 41–44; Eckey, Apostelgeschichte, 4–7; Marguerat, Actes, 30–31. Some take into account theological factors when approaching text criticism (see Schmid, “Eklektische Textkonstitution”). Research continues with new discoveries (Bethge, “Fragmenta biblica Cantabrigiensis”) and critiques of the neglect or misuse of some lines of evidence (Kyrychenko, “Old Slavonic Acts”).
After surveying various theories, Delobel concludes that the “Western” text remains “the most complicated matter in the field of New Testament textual criticism” and that there is no consensus today (“Text,” 106). One approach working through the Western variants appears in the work of Rius-Camps and Read-Heimerdinger, e.g., “Readings XIV”; “Readings XV”; “Readings XVI”; “Readings XVII”; “Readings XVIII.”
In Lucian’s parody True Story 2.20, the protagonist asks Homer in the afterlife if he wrote the lines that earlier grammarians bracketed as interpolations; Homer says that he did. On correction of Homer, see also the discussion in Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, xli, xlix–l.
Copying mistakes were frequent (e.g., Symm. Ep. 1.24). Josephus insists that no nation was as careful in copying and preserving its records as Israel was (Ag. Ap. 1.28–36). Niehoff, “Exegesis in Alexandria,” suggests that some Alexandrian Jews practiced text criticism on Scripture the way scholia did on the Iliad. The rabbis may have allowed that earlier scribes made some emendations (Gen. Rab. 49:7; Lieberman, Hellenism, 28–37, but cf. esp. 47); rabbis’ copying from memory was forbidden (Gen. Rab. 36:8).
On Bede, see Martin, “Introduction to Bede,” xviii–xx; see also Ambrosiaster Commentary on Paul’s Epistles (CSEL 81:169–79; Bray, Romans, 142).
Harnack, Acts, 48. Our general assurance that we have essentially the right text (e.g., Stanton, Gospel Truth?, 33–48) is thus more open to dispute in Acts. If one simply writes off the Western text, of course, the level of certainty is high, though lower than in the Gospel (Morton in Morton and MacGregor, Structure, 16).
Harnack, Acts, 48. Authors also altered texts for new editions (see Heyworth and Wilson, “Variants”; the discussion in on publication, below).
Strange, Problem, 189, argues that Acts, like many ancient works, was published posthumously in its unfinished draft form; Luke’s editors were his earliest interpreters. Cf. also Rackham, Acts, l–lv. Strange contends that both the “Western and non-Western texts represent versions of a text left unedited by Luke” (Problem, 186); some of the Western material may derive from the author’s own annotations, which the non-Western editing mistrusted.
Ancient teachers sometimes corrected their students’ editions of Homer (Plut. Alc. 7.1), as already noted; such a tradition of text criticism naturally facilitated tendencies toward scribal emendation. The abrupt ending of Mark as we have it also invited expansion.
Barrett, Acts, 29, 2:xix–xxiii, lxix.
Ibid., 2:lxix–lxx. One wonders if the later appearance of apocryphal acts may have further compounded such perceptions (although apocryphal gospels also circulated).
Witherington, Acts, 172–73; cf. similarly Dibelius, Studies in Acts, 84–92; Powell, Acts, 23.
Barrett, Acts, 2:lxix. Its readings may influence the Eastern Acts of Paul (Pervo, Acts, 3).
Bruce, Acts3, 74, allows that the Western text may even reflect an early second-century revision, which is sometimes as accurate as the Alexandrian text. From discourse analysis, Read-Heimerdinger, Bezan Text, even contends that the skilled literary cohesiveness of Bezae (D) points to a text earlier than most Alexandrian manuscripts (though others might use the cohesiveness to argue the opposite).
Bruce, Acts3, 72.
Ibid., 72–73, listing as examples “amplifications of our Lord’s name (cf. Ac. 1:21; 2:38; 7:55; 13:33), added references to the Spirit (cf. 15:7, 29, 32; 19:1; 20:3), and an increase in phrases such as ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ’ (cf. 6:8; 14:10; 18:8).”
Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 61 (“der älteste Kommentar zur Apostelgeschichte”). It may have been circulating already by the time of Irenaeus (Gregory, “Reception of Acts,” 63).
Bruce, Acts3, 75, attributes this view to F. Blass and T. Zahn and notes among its contemporary defenders M.-É. Boismard and A. Lamouille. Few today, however, hold this view (see the full argument against it in Head, “Texts,” esp. 420–42). Jean Leclerc proposed the idea in 1685 and “was also the first person to repudiate” it (as Pervo, Acts, 4, puts it; cf. also Head, “Texts,” 416). In one detailed form, Delebecque, Actes, contends that Luke the physician (Col 4:14) authored the original text, substantially our Alexandrian text, as a draft in 62, and revised it into what became the Western text in 67 (see esp. 373–96). Given the existence of drafts and multiple editions (see of this introduction), I would find the argument more persuasive if not for instances in the Western text (such as its anti-Judaic elements) that seem inconsistent with the earlier version.
Cf. Geer, “Lucanisms.”
See Witherington, Acts, 67; Barrett, Acts, 26–28. Strange, Problem, 189, suggests that both versions reflect some “Lucan traits, but neither of which is Lucan in all its readings”; it appears unlikely, however, that our non-Western text was so unfinished that Luke could not have finished its dedication to Theophilus and sent it to him (see Witherington, Acts, 66).
Barrett, Acts, 2:xix–xxiii; Bruce, Acts3, 73–76. Cf. Powell, Acts, 23: “Even if the Western text is a redaction, the manuscripts used by the redactors were probably older than any available to us today.”
See esp. the discussion in Head, “Texts.” This is the opinion also of, e.g., Porter, “Comment(ary)ing”; idem, “Developments”; Talbert, Acts, xxix; Parsons, Acts, 11–12. For the lack of consensus, see again Delobel, “Text,” esp. 106. Dibelius, Studies in Acts, 88, doubted that scholars should accept the Alexandrian text as readily in Acts as elsewhere; but (84–87, esp. 87) he also rejected the priority of the Western text with some isolated exceptions.
E.g., C. Williams, Acts, 229–30, concurs with A. C. Clark’s preference for the Western reading at Acts 20:4.
See Epp, Tendency; followed by others, e.g., Conzelmann, Acts, xxxiv–xxxv; Bruce, Acts3, 75. Because I argue that the church’s view of itself as a non-Jewish entity postdates our extant first-century documents (Keener, John, 195–98; cf. also 198–214; idem, Matthew, 46–50), I am all the more inclined to concur that these signs in the Western text are late. Some, however, support its antiquity, finding its emphasis on Israel’s rejecting the gospel more coherent than the Alexandrian text (where less reason is given for Israel’s judgment; cf. Faure, “Mystère”); or future hope for Israel’s conversion remains in the Western text, whereas the Alexandrian text’s ambivalence betrays signs of revision (Faure, Pentecôte, 493–94, arguing on 495 that the Western text is Luke’s text).
E.g., González, Acts, 12 (esp. n. 19); Witherington, “Anti-Feminist Tendencies”; idem, Acts, 506, 567n22; Malick, “Contribution”; Schulz, “Junia”; Kurek-Chomycz, “Tendency.”
C. Williams, Acts, 49, though he dates the apocryphal gospels to the same period; Pervo, Acts, 3, sees this text tradition as something of “a transition between the mentality (and theology) of the canonical Acts and its apocryphal successors.” Others also suggest that the Western text may preserve some plausible data, though they need not go back to Luke (Witherington, Acts, 68–69).
Pelikan, Acts, 33.
Bruce, Acts3, 75, noting that because the fourth characteristic is less emphatic than in the Apostolic Fathers, Menoud thinks it earlier than the Apostolic Fathers and hence contemporary with Alexandrian text. For a judicious comparison of the portrayal of Rome in Alexandrian and so-called Western traditions, see Omerzu, “Darstellung.”
Nock, Essays, 827, suggests plausibly that the individual behind much of the Western text “may well have belonged to the author’s own circle and have thought of himself as doing a service to the book by removing difficulties and preserving stray fragments of tradition.” If the companion behind the “we” material accompanied Paul to Rome, some in the western empire may have known him well; movement between east and west (e.g., between Corinth and Rome) was frequent in any case.
Dewey, “Oral-Aural Event,” 157–58, noting that storytellers could also expand or abridge depending on audience response.
For standard text-critical discussion see Metzger, Textual Commentary, 259–503; it will also be some time before Barrett’s text-critical comments (Barrett, Acts, passim) are superseded. For introductory discussions from various perspectives, see C. Williams, Acts, 48–53; Fitzmyer, Acts, 66–79 (including bibliography on 73–79); Barrett, Acts, 2–29.
E.g., Dunn, Acts, xi, in his case justifying this procedure broadly because he believes that the Western elaborations “do not belong to the original text,” although they may reveal “how Acts was received and used within early Western Christianity.”
As exemplified also in copies of Homer, the politics of admission into the Byzantine imperial library affected what would become a “majority” text (see Finkelberg, “Regional Texts”).
Bruce, Acts3, 70.
Bruce, ibid., 70, 154, 358, suggests Acts 4:17; 16:13.
E.g., Malina and Pilch, Acts. As of 1998, there were, apparently, relatively few; Barton, “Sociology,” notes especially Neyrey, Social World, and P. Esler, preferring the former approach but learning from both. For such approaches applied widely in the NT, see Esler, Worlds; applied to Paul, see, e.g., Barton, “Approaches”; Malina and Pilch, Letters; most commonly, in studies of Jesus and the Gospels, e.g., Stegemann, Malina, and Theissen, Setting; Geyser, “Uitgangspunte” (cf. also idem, “Metodologiese vooronderstellings”); Aarde, “Methods.” Some have critiqued NT social-scientific interpreters for lack of methodological precision (e.g., regarding Luke-Acts, Lindboe, “Samfunnsvitenskapene,” regarding Neyrey, Social World), but eclectic methodology, which is often needed, may sometimes sacrifice such precision (even if the identification of particular tools can be helpful). For valuable approaches and surveys, see, e.g., Horrell, Approaches; Osiek, Saying; for OT, Wilson, Approaches.
Although I have not participated in anthropological “field studies,” I have limited “field experience” (of nearly one year altogether) in some African settings (the majority of it living with Africans) and, more important, have been able to consult regularly with my wife, who is African and a historian and who spent most of her life in Africa (in both rural and urban settings), for an “inside” perspective on how these texts could sound. Thus, although scholars will need to count our firsthand observations of traditional African life as merely anecdotal, I have sometimes cited them where they have expanded my interpretive horizons and where such observations can supplement the cultural perspectives that usually inform Western scholars’ interpretive approach.
See, e.g., the emphasis in Adeyemi, “Approach”; for a survey of research a quarter century ago, Scroggs, “Present State” (cf. also Keck, “Ethos”). Gager, “Review” (esp. 175–77, 179), insists rigorously on the distinction between “social” and “sociological,” though allowing the value of each.
See, e.g., the caution in Pizzuto-Pomaco, “Shame,” 61. David Fraser, a sociologist conversant with biblical studies’ applications of the data (and for several years my university’s provost), and Marla Frederick, an anthropologist at Harvard also knowledgeable about biblical studies, have emphasized to me the importance of a heuristic approach. For one specific example of questions concerning some applications of social-scientific approaches (while remaining largely favorable), see Keener, “Review of Windows,” 226.
Harland, Associations, 15.
See, e.g., cautions in Malherbe, Social Aspects, 11–13; Winter, Left Corinth, xiii; Harrison, Grace, 14–15, 22–23; Stanton, New People, 85; Hemer, Letters, 211; Brown, Death, 21; Collins, “Apocalyptic Literature,” 362; also sources cited in Schnabel, “Reading Acts,” 267 (Osiek, “Handmaid,” 278; Sawicki, Crossing Galilee, 5–6, 37, 65–67; Jensen, Antipas, 30–34); see esp. Holmberg, Sociology, 145–57 (as cited in Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:16n15). Some writers note such a caution (e.g., Crossan, Jesus, 159) yet, in my mind, do not attend to it adequately. For a discussion of the meaning, use, and variety of models in social science, see Elliott, “Criticism,” 3–9; Holmberg, “Methods,” 267–68.
This has been true, in the past, of some psychologizing approaches (see critiques in Stein, “Reading”; Malina and Neyrey, Portraits, 14–15; Malina and Neyrey, “Personality,” 68), though the tide may be currently shifting in favor of more nuanced psychological approaches (see, e.g., Charlesworth, “Psychobiography”).
See the caution in King, “Anthropology.”
Especially Yale social historian Ramsay MacMullen (Christianizing, 7); for first-century Christian sources, note, e.g., discussions in Ashton, Religion, 32–40; Eve, Miracles, 357–59; Klutz, Exorcism Stories, 196–97.
I use academic sources for these comparisons where possible; but popular literature treats the subject far more abundantly, and I am comparing popular-level approaches in both eras.
Thus I draw heavily on studies of global Christianity, on the now-flourishing academic discipline of studies on Pentecostalism, and on other academic studies as well as much of the popular literature that is often studied in such research.
Keener, Miracles; cf. also idem, “Case.”
As Pliny the Elder noted nearly two millennia ago, his discipline was too large for any single authority to cover fully (N.H. 3.1.1–2). Rowe, World, 11, is right to emphasize the need to prioritize the text over the massive volume of secondary literature.
See esp. Mattill and Mattill, Bibliography (1966); the update for 1962–84 in Mills, Bibliography on Acts (1986; updated in Mills, Acts [1996]), with a thousand more articles (cf., comparably on the Gospels, Mills, Index); also Wagner, Bibliography, 331–550 (to 1981); for 1991–2003, see Marshall, “Current Study”; Bovon, Studies, 19–37 (cf. idem, “Studies”; idem, “Études”); Grässer, Forschungen; most accessible but much more selective (for many, a helpful trait), see Powell, Acts; Green and McKeever, Historiography (they also list some bibliographies, 15–18); for Polish Lukan studies of 1986–99, Kiedzik, “Bibliografia”; for the state of research, also Flichy, “État des recherches”; with attention to some recent key works, Schröter, “Actaforschung 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6”; a concise survey in Anthony, “Saying.” With a focus on methodology, see Penner, “Madness”; for a historical survey of views (esp. regarding history versus or plus theology), see Jáuregui, “Panorama.” One particularly helpful topical bibliography in a commentary is Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 9–48 (esp. 15–41).
Given the progress in electronic technology, one might soon hope to provide one’s own abstracts by accessing all articles online and reading their conclusions (barring cost constraints), but NTA is useful not only for its abstracts but also for the great breadth of sources from which it draws.
Particularly in , I have also used some nonacademic sources as primary sources to popular religion, as is the common practice in church history and other disciplines that study popular experience, as noted earlier.
Someday scholars will probably be able to scan in current commentators’ references and pull up full citations in both primary and secondary literature with little effort. I hope that in critiquing the work of their predecessors, they will remember that our tasks were more tedious (just as our generation has advantages—of translations, papyri collections, and word-processing programs—that some of the remarkable scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lacked).
For pre-Reformation scholarship, see the survey in Stuehrenberg, “Reformation”; more recently, see, e.g., the historical survey of Baptist scholarship in Barr, Leonard, Parsons, and Weaver, Acts. I have drawn on John Chrysostom’s and Bede’s commentaries and also extensively on the useful collection in Martin, Acts; many specialized studies are also useful (e.g., Müller, “Rezeption”). Pelikan, Acts, also helpfully collects many historical perspectives, although a range of reviewers have observed that this valuable work often reads theological reflections into Acts instead of providing commentary from the perspective of Luke’s own theology (see Behr, “Church”; Daley, “Confessions”; Rowe and Hays, “Commentary”). Some specialists in other ancient texts also address their reception history; see Roberts, “Reception,” and other articles in the same issue of Classical Bulletin.
For a critical survey of modern critical scholarship, see Gasque, Criticism, who rightly concludes (306–9) that many of the critical views before contemporary narrative criticism have proved unduly speculative.
Fitzmyer, Acts, xiii.
Martin, Acts.
Studying these later sources in their own right is a valuable task, but I wish to avoid confusing that study—or the study of other secondary literature cited—with understanding the text of Acts in its first-century context. Hearing the earliest (primary) sources first before secondary commentators is an important and widely observed historiographic principle (cf., e.g., Noll, Rise, 138).
Historically, the Western church had often lacked access to such sources; only in the twelfth century did Peter Lombard’s Sentences provide the Western church readier access to material from the authorities starting to be identified as “the Fathers” (see Evans, Wycliffe, 109). Some used returning to the Fathers, especially in original languages and entire contexts (as with Scripture), to challenge (rather than simply to reinforce) some inherited traditions of subsequent eras.
One might take, e.g., Justin, Origen, and the Eastern Fathers on free will (combating determinist philosophy involving fate; see Justin Dial. 141; 1 Apol. 43; Tatian Or. Gks. 11; excursus on fate and free will at Acts 2:23) and predestinarian ideas dominant in thinkers such as the later Augustine (both of which viewpoints left their mark clearly on subsequent theological traditions).
Cf. Martin, “Introduction to Acts,” xxii–xxiii: despite their strengths, the Fathers could use proof-texts against heresies and sometimes were (p. xxii) “more interested in moral exempla” for the purpose of “praise or blame.”
Hence, e.g., their concern with the rhetorical status of the LXX. Technically, the expression “Second Sophistic” derives from Philostratus in the early third century, but he applies it to many sophists of the previous two centuries (Anderson, “Second Sophistic,” 339).
Cf. also Pelikan, Acts, 192. Although Platonism influenced Alexandrian Judaism in this era (see, e.g., Wisdom of Solomon and esp. Philo), that Platonists were of far less importance in Luke’s circle is clear from Acts 17:18. Some later Fathers’ knowledge of the schools in 17:18 appears secondhand (so Martin, Acts, 215, on Bede).
Some were more anti-Jewish in their rhetoric than others. High-status roles for women in the church became an apologetic problem for some church fathers (see the accusations in Cook, Interpretation, 166–67), and texts on women were applied selectively (Clark, Early Church, 15–16), though we should not oversimplify (cf. perspectives in Clark, Women in Antiquity, 139–41; Swan, Desert Mothers, passim).
Cf. also Hays, Conversion, 43. They vary among themselves; 2 Clement and even Justin are closer to Judaism than some others, and Hegesippus and Jerome knew Jewish sources (cf. Diaspora Jewish influence on Cyril of Alexandria in Wilken, Judaism). With Latin writers, one must sometimes factor in even distance from Greek (Augustine, e.g., never mastered Greek, in contrast to modern NT exegetes); later Bede, despite his interest in historical context, lacked a wide range of ancient sources (Martin, “Introduction to Bede,” xxxi, argues that he knew only Josephus and Pliny directly, knowing other classical works indirectly through Isidore and others).
E.g., Keener, “Marriage, Divorce,” 713–14. This appears at least as early as Musonius (so Valantasis, “Musonius”; some of the ideas predate him, as in Gaca, “Technology”; in Philo, Sterling, Ancestral Philosophy, 216–17), but especially flourished in the second century and later (Deming, Celibacy; cf. Glenny, “Continence”).
Thus Irenaeus’s application of the Fourth Gospel to combat Gnosticism (see discussion in Keener, John, 161–69) instead of reading it as an intra-Jewish polemic, a reading probably more consistent with its origin (171–232).
On the accusations to which they responded, see, e.g., Cook, Interpretation.
Their interests are often homiletic, and the prevailing intellectual milieu among many philosophers encouraged the use of allegorization (although more in some schools, such as Alexandria, than in others). Some interpreters, such as John Chrysostom and often Bede (cf. Martin, “Introduction to Bede,” xviii–xxi, though Bede often allegorizes), tended to approach Acts more literally than many others.
For the warning that extant reception history tends to preserve the perspectives of the “winners,” see Ehrensperger, Power, 5; cf. the emphasis on distinguishing between the text and its reception history in idem, Encouraged, 177.
Aryan rereadings of biblical texts to subvert their use for the Nazi cause (see, e.g., discussion in Head, “Nazi Quest”; Poewe, Religions, passim; Bernal, Athena, 1:349; Theissen and Merz, Guide, 163) offer an extreme example that nearly all interpreters today would censure (not least because of the cause for which the texts were exploited). Contrast helpful culturally diverse readings, e.g., Keener and Carroll, Readings.
This transfer of “canonical” status from the text to the interpreter, when performed by a rhetorical sleight of hand (rather than merely as allusive and as a recognized rhetorical device), resembles the “transfer” persuasion technique (not unethical in all its forms, but capable of being employed deceptively; cf. Bremback and Howell, Persuasion, 235; McLaughlin, Ethics, 76, 146–47). In this limited space, one cannot enter into dialogue with the ethics of radical philosophic deconstruction or its results (especially since many of its advocates would regard the ethical claims as themselves relative and subject to deconstruction). Deconstruction does offer some useful insights (such as that no texts are fully consistent, as also noted in Dio Chrys. Or. 52.7; on such inconsistencies in ancient narratives, see, in more detail, Keener, John, 38–39, 901), including the contingency of all readings. My objective in this commentary, however, is to offer historical reconstructions as responsibly as possible (given the limits of the evidence and our own horizons) rather than to discount the value of such a course simply because it cannot be perfectly achieved.
Admittedly, not all critics will agree with language such as “ideal audience” (as Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 229, notes, some prefer “authorial audience” as more concrete historically).
Or whatever premises we can reasonably infer that the author likely shared with the ideal or authorial audience; see the discussion of relevance theory below in this chapter.
McKnight and Malbon, “Introduction,” 18; Donahue, “Redaction Criticism,” 45–48; Byrskog, “History,” 258–59, 283; Peterson, Acts, 41; Padilla, Speeches, 10–11.
Pervo, “Perilous Things,” 40, calls Cadbury “the prototype” of this approach.
See Tyson, “History to Rhetoric,” 23.
Ibid., 25–30.
Ibid., 30–31. For one recent survey of “background” approaches to Acts, see Baslez, “Monde”; for sample collections of relevant background, see, e.g., the useful works of Evans, Texts, 373–78; Boring, Berger, and Colpe, Commentary (because these sources are now readily available, I have not sought to duplicate their information in this commentary, although I will have unintentionally overlapped with it).
That is, exploring the degree of correspondence between Acts and its sources and between these sources and events they purport to recount. This task requires more space than most others, especially on controversial questions, and also dominates much of this introduction. It is not, however, my overall focus or this commentary’s primary distinctive contribution (even were it distinctive).
Smith, “Understand,” 48.
See, e.g., Penner, “Reconfiguring” (emphasizing the progymnasmata; these should be supplemented with reported real and model speeches from antiquity). For a more recent grammatical-rhetorical approach, see Martín-Asensio, Foregrounding.
For speeches, see, e.g., Quint. Inst. 10.1.20–21. Ancients also could recognize the reapplication of ancient quotations in (conspicuously) new ways (e.g., Brutus’s quote of Eurip. Med. 332 in Appian Bell. civ. 4.17.130; Virgil in Sen. E. Suas. 3.5–7; 4.4–5), and so writers sometimes used them for rhetorical display rather than for the authority of their original sense; but quotations used out of context to justify wrong behaviors could call for censure (as in Alciph. Paras. 20 [Thambophagus to Cypellistes], 3.56, ¶2). Speeches were deliberately designed so as to invite hearers to follow the flow of thought (Theon Progymn. 2.149–53).
Klauck, Context, 2; cf. Osborne, “Hermeneutics,” 391–95. On the importance of recognizing the texts’ ancient context, see also discussions in Malina, Anthropology, 153–54; idem, Windows, xi–xiii; cf. Spencer, “Approaches,” 399.
Although I will emphasize the other side of interpretation, some ancient interpreters also affirmed polyvalence, especially rabbis approaching their sacred texts (Edwards, “Crowns,” employing b. Menaḥ. 29b; cf. Driver, Scrolls, 550). Rabbis were not alone in presenting multiple views (Starr, “Flexibility”) (some presenters of multiple views, however, critiqued others whom they thought erroneous, e.g., Porph. Ar. Cat. 59.4–14, then affirming the “correct” interpreters in 59.15–19). The widespread ancient approach of allegory could lend itself to such claims, but some approaches tended to prevail in particular schools.
For “the return of the author,” see, e.g., Brown, Communication, 69–72 (emphasizing that the contemporary approach is more nuanced than earlier authorial approaches). Brown also notes that authorial activity functions differently in different sorts of texts; it is more prominent in “transmissive” communication (such as letters) than in more “expressive” communication (such as poetry), with narratives (e.g., Acts), which evoke a narrative world, between (75–76).
Burridge argues that “the purpose of the author is essential to any concept of genre as a set of expectations or contract between the author and the reader or audience” (Gospels, 125; cf. also, e.g., Shuler, Genre, 32; Allison, Moses, 3; Ashton, Understanding, 113). The classic defense of authorial intention is Hirsch, Validity, though the discussion has shifted since that time; for a brief discussion of this hermeneutic, see Osborne, “Hermeneutics,” esp. 390–91; Meyer, Realism, 35–41.
This language, too, has invited criticism, although most recognize narrative strategies (see “Implied author,” in Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 228).
Hays, Echoes, 201n90 (citing Wimsatt and Beardsley, “Intentional Fallacy,” 3, 5). Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 17, cites Hays approvingly. Vanhoozer, Meaning, 96n167, also distinguishes Wimsatt’s original and reasonable objection in other respects from some subsequent applications of the essay.
See Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts, 173, also noting the extrinsic reality of this author and audience, regardless of our ability to reconstruct them. On the importance of the rhetor’s goal in modern rhetorical criticism, see, e.g., Brock and Scott, Criticism, 412.
For the actor’s intention, see Hermog. Issues 49.9–14; 61.16–18; 67.6–8; 72.14–73.3; Quint. Decl. 274.8 (for a divine actor); 281.1–3; 289.2; 311.8; 373.12; Libanius Topics 2.1; also Robinson, Criminal Law, 16; cf. Cicero Fin. 3.9.32; Seneca Controv. 10.1.9; y. Ber. 2:1; for legislative intention, see Aeschines Ctes. 33; Lysias Or. 31.27, §189; Rhet. Alex. 1, 1422b.20–25; Hermog. Issues 40.6–19; 60.13–14; 66.12–13; 80.4–13; 82.4–5, 13–18; 83.20; 86.4–5; 91.9–13; Quint. Decl. 248.9; 249.3–5, 8; 251.2–3; 252.8; 274.9; 277.2; 297.8; 308; 317.9; 329; 331.3; 350.2, 6; esp. 317.2. Thus it was frequent to pit laws against each other; e.g., Quint. Decl. passim (e.g., 251 intro; 274 intro; 277.5; 299 intro; 303 intro; 304 intro; 304.1; 315 intro; 366 intro; esp. 304.1; 315.8). When useful for the case, however, one will play down the importance of the actor’s (e.g., Quint. Decl. 302.3; 314.6) or legislator’s (313.5–6) intention; laws should state qualifications (Arist. Rhet. 1.1.7, 1354a; Philost. Vit. soph. 2.33.628), or one must define them (Hermog. Issues 65.1–8), citing implicit exceptions (Seneca Controv. 9.4, passim). One’s goal in the case determines whether one appeals to intention or wording (Hermog. Issues 40.6–19).
See Pogoloff, “Isocrates.” Qoheleth rightly observed that nothing new is under the sun (Eccl 1:9).
E.g., cf. Aristotle’s μῦθος and modern plot (Belfiore, “Plots”); cf. also his conception of imitation (Rollinson, “Mythos and mimesis”). On his development of mimesis as an aesthetic approach, particularly for poetry and music, see, e.g., Butcher, Theory, 121–62.
The postmodern emphasis on multiculturalism, although often focusing on reading texts from various modern contexts, can also highlight the importance of reading texts from a particular language and culture with cultural sensitivity. But while I emphasize cultural sensitivity, I was surprised to learn that my emphasis on ancient cultural context was viewed by one generally favorable reviewer as unduly “postmodern” (cf. O’Grady, “Review,” 633)!
Classical influence was widespread. Cf. the influence of ancient historians on modern political theory in Fontana, “Historians”; on modern theater in Schröder, “History.”
Sometimes this assumption is made explicit; e.g., Dion. Hal. Isaeus 14 assumes that his readers/students have read Isaeus’s speeches on which he comments. Although we think primarily of Luke’s “audience” rather than “readers,” Polybius could speak (Polyb. 9.2.6) of his “readers” (though presumably among aristocratic intellectuals). Maxwell, “Audience,” addresses some assumed audience knowledge and even suggests that authors may omit some information to augment audience participation.
E.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 108.24–25, who interprets the use of fugit in Virg. Georg. 3.284 in light of Virgil’s use elsewhere; so also Dion. Hal. Demosth. 46 (on Demosthenes’s speeches); Philost. Hrk. 11.5 on Hom. Od. 18.359, using Hom. Il. 21.197; cf. Galen Grief 23b–26.
Cf. also, e.g., Libanius Maxim 3.9 (on Demosthenes). Although Heraclitus often simply allegorizes, sometimes (as in Heracl. Hom. Prob. 79.8) he appeals to circumstances in the narrative world to explain a character’s speech.
E.g., Xen. Cyr. 7.2.15 (alluding to the well-known Delphic oracle; cf. Hdt. 1.46–48); Phaedrus 5.10.10.
Elsewhere in ancient sources, e.g., Phaedrus 3.1.7; Dio Chrys. Or. 34.3, 10. Sometimes writers even deliberately obscured their meaning to outsiders (e.g., Nicholson, “Confidentiality”; less persuasively, Callaway, “Reflections”).
His literary focus was ancient literary forms and motifs.
Talbert, “Chance,” 236, 238–39, also complaining that the methods that are dominant tend to change from one decade to the next, in any case. Among approaches he judged merely temporarily fashionable was structuralism, which has indeed gone out of vogue. Many today might concur with his verdict on that point (noting its ahistorical approach, see, e.g., Kee, Miracle, 290–91; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 128).
Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 11–12. The focus is not on borrowing but on how the early audience for which the text was produced in a particular cultural framework would have understood it (16).
Ibid., 14–15 (citing Peter J. Rabinowitz and Hans Robert Jauss). See also Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 229, as noted above.
Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 15 (distinguishing this approach from W. Iser’s “implied reader,” who is inferred solely from the text). Cf. Lang, Kunst, 56–89 (on “Textlinguistik als Rezeptionsästhetik”).
See Bendlin, “Intertextuality,” 873–74.
Ibid., 874 (worded in light of further personal correspondence with Prof. Bendlin, Sept. 7, 2011). For intertextuality in ancient historians, one may observe Tacitus’s allusions to and transformation of Augustus’s Res gestae (see discussion in O’Gorman, “Intertextuality,” 231–33, though contrasting this on 233 with Tacitus’s more explicit reference to some other earlier works).
The later “Neo-Aristotelian” “Chicago school” critics, e.g., Booth, differ from the New Critics in emphasizing the communication between writer and reader.
Even apparently purely intrinsic literary approaches themselves arise in particular historical and social contexts (see, e.g., Malina and Pilch, Acts, 3–5, noting esp. Prickett, Origins of Narrative). (For their plea for taking into account the original social contexts, see also Malina and Pilch, Letters, 5–9.)
Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts, 173; on speech-act theory, see also, e.g., Brown, Communication, 32–35. See the extensive theoretical reflection on texts as communicative acts (218–29) and authors as communicative agents (229–40) in Vanhoozer, Meaning (including Searle’s speech-act theory, 243); for implications, see 240–65. As one critic suggests, “Every text, even the most elementary, implies information that it takes for granted and doesn’t explain. Knowing such information is the decisive skill of reading” (Hirsch, Literacy, 112).
Klutz, Exorcism Stories, 16.
Ibid., 17, emphasizing “the sociocultural facet of stylistics . . . developed . . . by the British linguist Roger Fowler” as a form of “linguistic criticism.”
With, e.g., Dunn, “Reconstructions,” 296 (though cf. qualifications, 309–10). For the necessity of taking into account cultural context even in translation, see, e.g., Wendland, Cultural Factor.
See, e.g., Vanhoozer, Meaning, 242 (noting that reference to the author’s language necessarily implies reference, on some level, to an author’s intention). Thus not only idioms but even lexemes and smaller symbolic units (such as letters) depend on a shared cultural history for their meaning; even language is a facet of culture, so denying the relevance of cultural context for reconstructing a communication is naive.
For some relevant seminal works, see, e.g., Sperber and Wilson, “Précis”; idem, Relevance; Wilson and Sperber, “Outline”; idem, “Representation”; I owe these citations to Gutt, Relevance Theory, 77–79. For biblical studies, see, e.g., Green, “Pragmatics”; idem, “Interpretation”; “Metarepresentation”; Jobes, “Relevance Theory”; Brown, Communication, 35–38; Sim, “Relevance Theoretic Approach,” ch. 2. For its compatibility with speech-act theory (despite the different emphases), see Brown, Communication, 35n16, 46–47.
Communication within a shared framework always leaves some information implicit, economizing language (Gutt, Relevance Theory, 33).
See further, e.g., ibid., 27; Sim, “Relevance Theoretic Approach,” ch. 2.
Gutt, Relevance Theory, 28; “context” here involves the hearer’s “cognitive environment” (21–22). Thus some messages cannot be communicated without background information for the speaker’s original context (35, 63–68, 71–74).
Hengel and Schwemer, Between Damascus and Antioch, ix. For some, such ahistoricism permits their privileging of their scholarly tradition’s hypothetical constructs of early Christianity over the probably better-informed (albeit no less perspectival) reconstruction of Luke. In view of reception history, Schnabel, “Reading Acts,” 257, notes that dehistoricized readings tend to become speculative, often driven by current interpretive fashion.
Hengel and Schwemer, Between Damascus and Antioch, ix.
Not all grant equal weight to its evidence, but most will question the arguments of those who reject out of hand all our earliest narrative evidence and then create new hypotheses, which they argue mainly from the silence that remains. With such speculative approaches, one could create virtually any scenario.
My PhD at Duke University was in “New Testament and Christian Origins”; in keeping with my training, I am interested in both the NT documents and the history of earliest Christianity.
This is not to claim that ancient historians wrote history the way modern ones do; everyone allowed them a range of rhetorical liberty in telling their story (see below).
Witherington, Acts. For a brief history of modern sociorhetorical criticism (esp. 1980s–1990s), see Robbins, “Test Case,” 164–71. Rhetorical criticism of the NT more generally has a long history (see, e.g., Classen, Rhetorical Criticism, 8–16, 99–177; idem, “Rhetorik”; idem, “Rhetoric”; idem, “Analyse”; Peterson, Eloquence, 7; Thurén, “Chrysostom”; Black, Rhetoric of Gospel, 1–22).
Robbins, Jesus the Teacher.
As noted, I have also drawn, at points, on literature about, or firsthand observations of, traditional or transitional societies, which, though not at all identical with NT cultures, offer similarities at many points that seem foreign to modern (or postmodern) Western postindustrial societies. Likewise, experience of house churches, Pentecostal movements, minority or sectarian religious movements, etc., can also offer some parallels to NT experiences that seem foreign to many traditional Westerners. In all these instances, I seek to learn respectfully from these cultures and movements (to at least some degree perhaps aided by my marriage into an African family) without using the parallels to supplant hard data from Greco-Roman antiquity. (As mentioned above, I sometimes cite my wife’s firsthand observations of traditional African life where they have expanded my interpretive horizons.)
Winter, Left Corinth, xiii. For analogous cautions, see, e.g., Harrison, Grace, 14–15, 22–23; the warning against treating texts more suspiciously than models in Freyne, “Archaeology,” 69 (following Sawicki, Crossing Galilee, 64–67); warnings of bias in Levine, “Theory.”
See – (esp. 5) below; and note much more thoroughly, e.g., Rothschild, Rhetoric of History.
In contrast to elite historians like Tacitus and Suetonius, Luke would not have had tertiary training in rhetoric. Nevertheless, anyone who attended civic assemblies (if Luke was a citizen of a city) or listened to speakers in the market would know the basic conventions; rhetoric was the more popular and publicly employed of the two major advanced disciplines, and those communicating effectively with an urban audience would reflect its influence.
Although it was short by the standards of histories composed by elite historians, we should remember that the affordability of such works probably meant that even the minority of people who could read it could not own a copy. Those who could not read it could still hear it, but the author necessarily represents, and especially appeals at least partly to, a more educated circle that could help circulate the work. Acts is “popular” by the standards of the elite, but even popular works, e.g., most extant novels, probably presuppose a level of education beyond that available to the majority of people in Greco-Roman antiquity (cf. Bowie, “Readership,” 452–53; Stephens, “Who Read Novels?,” 415).
Hock, “Paul and Education,” 204; Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 8–10; Satterthwaite, “Acts,” 340–41; Townsend, “Education,” 149, 151–52; Heath, Hermogenes, 11–12; Stamps, “Children,” 198; Christes, “Education/Culture,” 833; Burridge, “Gospels and Acts,” 510; Kennedy, “Survey of Rhetoric,” 18–19; cf. Quint. Inst. 2.2.1, 3; Dio Chrys. Or. 18.1–2, 5, 18–19; Tac. Dial. 34–35. Some may have even received some rhetoric at the grammar stage (Suet. Gramm. 4).
Cf. Satterthwaite, “Acts,” 342; Dowden, “Narration”; Kennedy, Art of Rhetoric, 378–427, esp. 385; Scodel, “Drama and Rhetoric,” 489–504; in speeches in novels, see, e.g., Anderson, “Second Sophistic,” 347–49; in Ovid’s poetry, Auhagen, “Rhetoric”; in Seneca the Younger’s essays and even letters, see Wilson, “Rhetoric”; for some interaction with Roman satire, see Hooley, “Rhetoric” (with appropriate qualifications); for rhetorical influence on a range of written forms, cf. Fox, “Rhetoric,” 370 (for whom the distinction between rhetoric and literature is partly anachronistic; cf. 380). The nature of rhetoric’s contribution varies; among epics, its influence is far more pervasive in Lucan than in Virgil (Narducci, “Rhetoric,” 382).
Albeit not in the way that modern readers expect it in modern historiography, since (as noted below) ancient historians were concerned with producing cohesive and instructive narrative, not simply recitation or discussion of bare information.
Similarly, Lincoln’s commentary on John (John, 2) notes that historical reliability is not a primary focus, yet by virtue of the shape of critical scholarship, he is compelled to devote extensive attention to it (cf. Keener, “Review of Lincoln”).
My primary literary interest concerns its first-century context, but this remains a question of meaning and not simply an evaluation of historical accuracy. Because I focus on the setting of Acts, some critics may be tempted to dismiss the value of all literary insights in this commentary. I would urge them to keep in mind the size of the commentary and so recognize that even if my work on Luke’s internal themes and cohesiveness does not take up much of the space in the commentary proportionately, there remains, if extracted, enough for a smaller book.
I believe that this commentary’s historical orientation makes it somewhat stronger in the Pauline sections (esp. Acts 13–28), where the texture of Luke’s account changes (moving beyond Judea and probably vaguer tradition into more concrete material in a broader Mediterranean framework).
Others have also suggested terminology for gradations of historical likelihood—e.g., Broadhead, “Priests,” 125. For the importance of degrees of probability in epistemology, see Polanyi, Knowledge, 31–32; Licona, Resurrection, 120–25.
Thus, e.g., many confessional scholars doubt the common antisupernaturalism often presupposed by secular historical critics and vice versa. A level public playing field methodologically would privilege instead a more agnostic methodological approach that neither affirms nor rejects a priori such claims in given cases. See discussion on signs in below.
See discussion in Theissen and Merz, Guide, vii; Charlesworth, “Jesus, Literature, and Archaeology,” 178; Tucker, Knowledge, 240.
Among the implications of this is Luke’s greater proportionate interest in dramatic action scenes than, e.g., Polybius, who, while reporting actions, elaborates them less extensively than lengthy speeches and is more interested in events of public, political consequence.
It is usually events, rather than details, that we can test from external sources.
Cf. Keener, John, xxix–xxx.
I argued, ibid., 185–94, that rabbinic literature is nevertheless useful, especially when it is all we have to work with (some others go further than I did; e.g., Batch, “Littérature tannaïtique”). I neglected to mention there various studies arguing for correspondences with the Qumran scrolls (addressed by, e.g., Baumgarten, “Qumran Studies,” 256; linguistically, cf. Wieder, “Notes”), lack thereof (e.g., Neusner, “Testimony”; Marcus, “Scrolls,” 27), or some of each (e.g., Schiffman, Law, passim, e.g., 36; Mandel, “Exegesis”). For a much more thorough and nuanced treatment of dating rabbinic literature than I provided, see esp. Instone-Brewer, Traditions, who has applied to many texts the methodology developed by Jacob Neusner.
Despite the consensus on the date of the rest of 1 Enoch (300–200 B.C.E.; Charlesworth, “Consensus”), the Similitudes have been thought pre-Christian (idem, Pseudepigrapha and New Testament, 18, 44), post-Christian (Sanders, Paul and Judaism, 347–48), Jewish Christian (sources in Longenecker, Christology, 13, 83–84, esp. J. T. Milik), anti-Christian (Jas, “Hénoch”), early second century C.E. (Hindley, “Date”), medieval (Black, “Parables”), or mostly finished by 50 B.C.E. (Bampfylde, “Similitudes”); but the majority do see it as non-Christian and pre-70 (see Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha and New Testament, 89; idem, Jesus within Judaism, 39–40; McNamara, Judaism, 85; contesting one argument for dating, see Ehro, “Nature”). Other ancient works cited Enoch literature, although sometimes not our edition of 1 Enoch, suggesting texts no longer extant (Test. Sim. 5:4; Test. Levi 10:5; Test. Benj. 9:1; Test. Dan 5:6).
Despite clear Jewish affinities and origins (for Qumran parallels, see Chevallier, Esprit et le Messie, 116–20) and some early Hebrew versions at Qumran (see McNamara, Judaism, 82, 89–90; Grelot, “Notes sur Testament,” esp. 406; cf. Milik, “Testament de Lévi”), it is, in its present Greek form, a Christian work (so de Jonge, though now allowing a Jewish stage; Collins, “Testamentary Literature,” 272; Daniélou, Theology, 14–15) or (the majority view) Jewish with Christian interpolations (Charles, “Testaments,” 282; Grant, Judaism and New Testament, 86; Bickerman, “Date,” 260; Charlesworth, “Self-Definition in Additions,” 35–41; idem, Pseudepigrapha and New Testament, 38–39; idem, Pseudepigrapha and Research, 211–13; see the survey in Collins, “Testamentary Literature,” 268–72). The dual emphasis on Judah and Levi might not sound like the early Christianity with which we are most familiar, but it appears in a Christian interpolation in Test. Jos. 19:11.
E.g., Davila, “Pseudepigrapha as Background” (NT scholars cannot depend on its priority); Turner, “Testament of Abraham,” 220–21, who thinks that it is mostly non-Christian with Christian redactions; Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha and New Testament, 42, who dates it to the late first or early second century; for works with various perspectives, see Nickelsburg, “Review.” Certainly, apparently Christian elements abound (e.g., few being saved via a narrow gate; most obviously, the trinitarian benediction). On the recensions, see Nickelsburg, “Eschatology”; Schmidt, “Recensions,” 65–83; Martin, “Syntax Criticism”; Kraft, “Reassessing”; some (e.g., Ludlow, “Recension”; Laws, James, 73) think that rec. A preceded rec. B, but both may reflect an earlier text. There may be some Semitic idioms (Turner, “Testament of Abraham,” 222–23); Martin, “Syntax Criticism,” 96, suggests that rec. B is more Semitic but that both reflect an earlier Semitic original. Clearly, however, the current Testament of Abraham reflects various Hellenistic motifs (see Allison, “Calf”; idem, “Tree”).
See Levinskaya, Diaspora Setting, ix–x.
Ibid., 16–17 (using the example of rabbinic sources); cf. p. x.
Donaldson, Paul and Gentiles, 51; cf. Gathercole, Boasting, 24–26.
Recent years have witnessed the publication of many useful works on the Greco-Roman context of Acts, most notably the multivolume Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, published by Eerdmans and Paternoster.
The dominant approach in, e.g., most of Dennis MacDonald’s works so far, including Imitate Homer. Although one cannot a priori rule out the possibility of a Homeric hypotext, most critics so far, after examination, have found the theories unconvincing (see Mitchell, “Homer,” on MacDonald, Epics; Sandnes, “Imitatio”; Johnson, “Imitate”; less negatively, Harstine, “Imitate”; I have profited here from dialogue with Professor Carsten Claussen of the University of Munich, who brought these sources to my attention); especially problematic are “a search for the hypotext” (Mitchell, “Homer,” 255; cf. Johnson, “Imitate,” 490, on the more proximate sources influenced by Homer), an emulation that is “not recognized” (Sandnes, “Imitatio,” 725), and (in these works) neglect for “the OT intertextuality that is broadcast in this literature” (732). Having offered these reservations, I must nevertheless express admiration for Professor MacDonald’s brilliance, and appreciation for his highlighting one important potential aspect of Luke’s literary milieu. He is working on LXX intertextuality as well, which his previous work, while not focusing on it, did not reject.
This is merely a sample; like Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 41–49; Poster, “Affections,” 35n20), which Aristotle directed toward his students (Clayton, “Audience”), Rhetorica ad Alexandrum apparently was not widely in use in our period (Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 96). When taken together with a wider range of rhetorical sources, however, it often reflects more common ideas in ancient rhetorical traditions and thus serves our general purposes.
I have offered only samples, though I would not mind excluding some less relevant suggested backgrounds from consideration (with, e.g., Cadbury, Acts in History, 28, on mystery cults; I note them, but they are less central to Luke’s ideal audience than, e.g., the LXX, rhetoric, or basic acquaintance with philosophic sects).
Interpretation and biases can be just as involved in reading archaeological evidence as in reading literary evidence (cf. Tiwald, “Archäologie”).
E.g., Yamauchi, Stones, 146–57 (developing Lapp, Archaeology, 83–84); McRay, Archaeology, 22.
E.g., Kent, Inscriptions, no. 57 (inv. 2414) (p. 57, an inscription confirming a claim in Paus. 2.4.6). Likewise, scholars have often doubted the existence of thirteenth-century Dibon (cf. Num 21:30; 32:3, 34; 33:45–46), on the basis of the lack of archaeological evidence at the expected site, but explicit Egyptian epigraphic evidence proves its existence (Kitchen, Reliability, 195).
Avoiding the charge of being insufficiently thorough also motivated some ancient writers in choosing what to include (e.g., Hermog. Progymn. 10, “On Ecphrasis,” 23).
Where ideas are now common property, I am generally more concerned to provide samples of those who hold them than to trace the historical lineage of these views, interesting as that exploration would be. Many ideas can be traced in literature long before their appearance in twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship.
E.g., my first publication coincided with similar yet independent observations by a rabbinic scholar published the same year (Keener, “Heavenly Court”; Lachs, Commentary, 92, 94).
My focus is broadly cultural more than lexical, but it is difficult to avoid some explicit use of Greek, given the widely varying ways a given term may be translated. (Note that although I use also cognates in my lexical approach to some terms, I seek to do so cautiously, i.e., only where cognates recall some of the semantic range of the term in question.) Nevertheless, some reviewers have appeared to suppose that commentators who include minimal Greek in the text of their commentaries are unfamiliar with the language. Especially in view of word programs today easily able to insert the Greek text (even if the commentator possessed only minimal knowledge), such a supposition of academic incompetence on the basis of sparse display of Greek seems remarkable.
Thus, e.g., I intended Keener, Matthew, to be useful to advanced-level expositors and advanced students as well as to scholars. My New Cambridge Bible Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Keener, Corinthians) is at a more basic but still middle-range level. Keener, John, by contrast, is written specifically for scholars and advanced students, though of value to others who know how to find what they need there. Those who demand a popular treatment of some of the same material (specifically, the background) would find the survey version in Keener, Background Commentary.
As I have noticed in reviews complaining that I offer too much documentation (for just one example, Regent’s Reviews 23 [spring 2004]: 9, though in a very positive and fair context).
Reviewers who complained that Keener, Background Commentary, did not provide enough documentation (e.g., Stoutenburg, “Review,” 153; Brug, “Review,” 238; more understandingly and positively, e.g., Starner, “Review,” 175; Lanier, “Review,” 96) are partly responsible for my citing so much of my documentation in my academic works.
This means that, wherever possible, I draw on sources outside the usual range of immediate NT scholarly training so as to provide the optimum new benefits.
Naturally, many references will overlap simply because they are the only, or the most obvious, references in our extant sources addressing a subject, but when many such references are available and many commentators cite the same ones, it may be inferred that, in these instances at least, there is a good chance that they have followed earlier commentators rather than collected these particular references while directly reading through the primary sources. Any casual observer of commentaries will recognize that this practice is so common as to constitute a typical practice. I am not complaining here about the practice (when earlier commentators have found helpful sources, I too am ready to use them) but about reviewers who do not recognize when some scholars have in fact read through the ancient sources and offer ancient sources not previously applied to Acts. (Anyone reading works by a number of NT scholars [e.g., D. Aune, W. Cotter, D. Instone-Brewer, A. Malherbe, E. P. Sanders, G. Sterling, and C. Talbert, as a small sample among too many others to name] can recognize that they have devoted decades of attention to primary sources and offer fresh insights.)
Thus many chapters could have been expanded into books of their own by my spelling out in greater detail the particulars of ancient references I have only been able to list in footnotes. I trust that some will follow up these references in greater detail, including some who have told me that they never cite commentaries, though they cite the references that they find in them—a practice that has always bewildered me.
Because of the way I approached my research in ancient sources, I have material to write heavily academic commentaries on most of the NT, and at the private and public urging of some colleagues to make the research available, I am writing as quickly as my abilities and time constraints allow. But having written different forms of commentaries, I recognize that heavy academic commentaries such as this one take years of basically full-time work to produce, limiting my options for future publication if I assume an average longevity.
This approach can, if used carefully, help us to appreciate the ancient texts more, rather than less, sensitively. When reapplication is analogous, in a new cultural setting, to the function of the secondary communication’s point in its original setting, such reapplication can be helpful in evoking its sense for hearers in the new setting (Gutt, Relevance Theory, 68–70).
Those teaching about other ancient texts also sometimes interest students in the viable messages of those texts (see, e.g., Newlands, “Ovid”).
Mitchell, “Family Matters,” 346; cf. similarly Meeks, “Why Study?,” 167, urging in his Society for New Testament Studies address that NT scholars stay relevant to this audience; Agosto, “Publics”; Westerholm, “Introduction,” 2–3; Horrell and Adams, “Introduction,” 42. For reading from the vantage point of faith, see, e.g., Hays, Conversion, 190–201. In my own case, I was interested in Greco-Roman history and culture generally when I was an atheist, but acquired an interest in Acts only as a Christian believer (though, of course, others, e.g., Lüdemann, can have interest in Acts without personal religious connections to it).
See, e.g., contextual-application commentaries by González, Acts; Fernando, Acts; Miller, Empowered for Mission; Wagner, Acts; Williams, “Acts”; primarily North American applications in Allen, Preaching; Gangel, Acts; Hughes, Acts; Willimon, Acts; Yrigoyen, Acts; also preaching in Jacobsen and Wasserberg, Preaching; Green, Word; genre-sensitive preaching in Krentz, “Down”; my own popular-level approach in Keener, Acts Studies (though some of my own material was edited out and some applications that I did not write were added in); for another praxis-oriented approach, see Dormeyer and Galindo, Apostelgeschichte; outside the commentary genre, cf. also the useful thematic application of Acts in Green, Thirty Years; Keck, Mandate; González, Months; Fryer, “Congregational Renewal”; for meditative readings, e.g., Gargano, “Lectio divina.” See, e.g., Kanyoro, “Mission,” for the relevance of Acts for an African context, both for the empowerment of the Spirit and for proclaiming justice.
The piecemeal application of paragraphs to personal felt needs of hearers, characteristic of some modern Western preaching, says as much about us as about Luke: that was not his purpose. We can recontextualize his point, but in so doing, we ought to be careful not to forget his point.
For which reason Porter, “Comment(ary)ing,” is mostly skeptical of the value of application commentaries. When I do illustrate how texts have been applied, I have sometimes looked to concrete historical models (including patristic sources). At times this also includes what were then new movements (on at least a sociological level, analogous to some features of the early Christian movement), including examples from new, widespread religious movements traditionally underrepresented in academia of their era (e.g., early Mennonites or Methodists or, increasingly cited in academic works, today’s global Pentecostalism).
Whenever possible, I cite the OCD and other articles by authors’ names, even when the dictionary does so only by abbreviation, from the conviction that crediting authors whenever possible is important.
My focus is more broadly social-historical than lexical and hence entailed more reading through ancient sources in their entire contexts than performing computer searches. Work with the TLG would necessarily concentrate on verbal more than conceptual parallels; given the availability of verbal searches to other scholars I have tried to focus in most cases on the conceptual parallels. But lexicography is important, and my work could easily be vastly supplemented, especially through extensive use of the TLG and papyrological databases.
I have focused more on concepts than on words, because that is a distinctive service my commentary can offer; but of course one cannot access concepts in texts without the words that convey them. In the many cases where I do offer verbal parallels, scholars working from the TLG could offer more. I explored mostly classical (as well as early Jewish) works in their original contexts to see where they would lead, so as to avoid simply duplicating what work could be accomplished as readily by others with different time constraints. Those working from computer searches will naturally find more references; although this approach is of enormous benefit, scholars should not abandon inductive reading of ancient texts to learn whatever may be found there.
That is, I am more interested in following where the data appear to lead than in offering proposals that are merely “novel” but that I think improbable.
See, e.g., the warnings in Horsley, “Assembly,” 373, 375; Pilch, “Jews and Christians”; Eisenbaum, “Polemics”; against essentialist readings of such diverse movements, also Stern, “Limitations”; Nanos, “Judaism” (esp. 156). Even describing early Christians as a “new religious movement” (Watson, Gentiles, 86) can sometimes reduce to sectarianism (cf. 87–93); for definitions, see, e.g., Keener, John, 149–50. I most often use “Jewish” ethnically (hence including Paul and other early leaders in the Jesus movement; religious self-identification would have also included them). An increasing number of scholars are shifting the use to “Judean” (cf., e.g., Cromhout and van Aarde, “Judean Ethnicity”; Elliott, “Israelite”; Malina and Pilch, Acts, 2–3; cf. idem, Letters, 29; Elliott, Arrogance, 16; particularly helpfully, Mason, “Jews”); although the vast majority of first-century Jews (technically “Judahites”) lived in the Diaspora, Gentiles did often view them as unassimilated “Judeans,” rendering such language potentially useful (for whatever other reasons it may or may not be helpful; several writers go too far in separating modern Jewish ethnicity from ancient Judaism; note esp. the important concerns in Levine, Misunderstood Jew, 160–65). Nevertheless, this recent approach seems problematic for historical reasons (see Das, Debate, 59) as well as practical ones: because this usage renders more difficult semantic distinctions between Jewish residents of Judea and Diaspora Jews and because those distinctions are important in a book in which much of the action hinges on interchange between Judean and Diaspora followers of Jesus, I have retained more traditional usage here.
Notations such as “see comment on Acts 11:26” refer to comments in this commentary ad loc.
See Keener, John, 215, 226–27; idem, Matthew, 48–49; Saldarini, “Conflict”; idem, Community; Overman, Crisis (e.g., p. 10).
Cf., e.g., Keener, Background Commentary, 827; idem, Corinthians, 168.
Cf. use by classicists, e.g., R. MacMullen (Paganism); two of J. Gager’s works (Moses; Anti-Semitism); one by J. N. Sevenster (Anti-Semitism); the 1996 work by L. M. White (Origins of Architecture, vol. 1); one 2003 translation of H. J. Klauck (Magic; “paganism” in the title translates the German Heidentum, with the same associations); also in Ehrman, Prophet, 56. With Rowe, World, 14, I use it not to denigrate but “because of the lack of workable alternatives.”
Today’s pejorative usage makes the label problematic (Remus, “Paganism,” preferring “polytheism,” though noting its inadequacy as well). Yet some scholars note problems in viewing polytheism as the sole alternative to Jewish and Christian religion (Choat and Nobbs, “Formulae”; cf. Fürst, “Monotheistische Tendenzen”). The terminology also appears in anthropological studies of newer religions (e.g., Poewe, Religions, 86, 160, 173; sometimes it is a self-designation).
Some ancients depicted the entire land as “Palestine” in this period, but its official Roman designation as such may be later (so Müller, “Palaestina”). Although Jacobson intriguingly links the title with Jacob the “wrestler” (“Palestine and Israel”; idem, “Palestine Meant Israel”), Josephus’s link with the Philistines remains the dominant connection (“Palestine” or “Palestinian” appears more than a hundred times in Josephus, usually in connection with the Philistines except when quoting outsiders, e.g., Ag. Ap. 1.169, 171). But the term did at least sometimes apply to the post-Philistine coastal region before the second century; cf. the brief discussion in LaSor, “Palestine,” 632–33, citing Hdt 1.105; 2.104, 106; 3.5; 7.89 (followed in Jos. Ag. Ap. 1.171; cf. Ant. 1.145; 8.260).
E.g., Odeberg, Gospel (1929; repr. 1968); Belkin, Philo (1940); Bonsirven, Judaism (1950; trans. 1964); Lieberman, Hellenism (1962); JPFC passim (1974–76); Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (1974); Sanders, Paul and Judaism (1977); Theissen, Sociology (1978); McNamara, Judaism (1983); Bauckham, Acts in Setting (1995); Ilan, Women (1995–96); Hanson and Oakman, Palestine (1998).
Stoutenburg, “Review,” 153.
See also Keener, “Official”; idem, “Asia and Europe.”
The Roman Empire’s cultural sphere (extending over southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa) should be distinguished from the northern European civilization that laid claim to its heritage (addressed in Usry and Keener, Religion, 41–44). The Hellenistic East also differed much from the latinized West.
Also my “Asia and Europe.” Given traditional Greek boundaries between “Europe” and “Asia” at the Hellespont (although Ionian colonization, hellenization, and finally the empire had obliterated most such boundaries in practical cultural terms), some Greeks in Luke’s day could have viewed the early Jesus movement as an Asian movement encroaching on their culture (see comment on Acts 16:8–9; Keener, “Asia and Europe”). Romans, too, often expressed xenophobic hostility toward Eastern cults (such as the ethnic religion of Judeans) invading their culture (cf., e.g., Keener, Paul, 140–42; further comment at Acts 16:20–21). Postcolonial readings highlight the presence of the empire (e.g., Joy, “Transitions”), which is indeed pervasive in Acts. Particular approaches vary among interpreters, often with differing sociopolitical locations (see discussion in Samuel, Reading, 14–34; cf. idem, “Mission,” 27–28; for examples in biblical studies, see also Moore and Segovia, Criticism; e.g., Niang, Faith; Stanley, Apostle; the warning in Moore, “Empire,” 21–23).
E.g., Neusner, Christianity; Fine, Interaction; Gager, Moses; Goodenough, Symbols; Ilan, Women; Jeffers, World; Sampley, Paul; Stowers, Letter Writing; OCD passim; DNTB passim; Cook, Interpretation; Taubenschlag, Law of Egypt; Danker, Benefactor; Aune, Literature; Penner and Vander Stichele, Contextualizing Acts.
Similarly, abbreviations and style guides changed even between the beginning of my work on the commentary and its completion.