Section 53
Graeco-Roman Setting. Edited by David W. J. Gill and Conrad Gempf. Volume 2 in The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting. 6 volumes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1994.
Because Acts takes place within the cosmopolitan world of the Roman Empire, it is useful to historians of the first-century eastern Roman Empire. Because other data from the Empire enable us to grasp the cultural presuppositions with which Luke and his audience both approached his work, a volume like this one (building on dialogue between ancient historians and New Testament scholars) is essential. Although many of the essays build on the contributions of earlier scholarship, they usually provide significant advances as well.
One possible weakness of the work was inevitable: no matter how large the work, one cannot limit the scope of issues relevant to Acts to a single volume without some measure of arbitrariness. Thus, for example, a chapter on food shortages helpfully illumines one feature of Acts 11, but the book lacks a chapter on Greco-Roman prophetism that might illumine how Greek readers may have understood another feature of Acts 11. Given the high quality of the essays, however, we may suspect that one principle of selection for topics was the availability of a scholar with substantial expertise on that topic, and this principle has led to a work of relatively consistent excellence.
Though necessarily briefer than Charlesworth’s and Casson’s works on ancient travel, Brian Rapske’s chapter applies data about ancient travel particularly to the narratives of Acts. He provides a corrective to the useful work of Ramsay, especially regarding the frequency of off-season travel, hence explaining the decisions made in Acts 27 and 28. He reaffirms a Malta shipwreck, and believes that the author probably participated in the events.
New Testament scholars have long depended on Ramsay’s 1904 essay on Roman roads and travel, but David French provides up-to-date analysis based on more recent discoveries of milestones and other evidence. Paul’s first journey was by Roman roads; his second journey, however, avoided them, suggesting that he learned the safety of avoiding major cities and routes for a time.
Bruce Winter provides evidence for severe famine in the eastern Mediterranean in the time of Claudius (“all the earth” being prophetic overstatement). In another essay he makes a good case that conflict with the imperial cult probably characterized Christianity much earlier in its history than New Testament scholarship supposes, perhaps as early as Acts 18.
E. A. Judge and others challenged the prior consensus that the poor predominated among the early urban Christians; David W. J. Gill emphasizes (challenging some recent work) the preeminence of the urban elite in the churches and their impact on the spread of early Christianity.
We profit from material related to Bradley Blue’s dissertation, most of which is known to few scholars working in the New Testament field. In more than one hundred pages he provides an excellent survey of data on early Christian house churches and demonstrates an outstanding command of secondary literary on the Greco-Roman social environment.
The section on specialized geographical regions helps acquire more sensitivity to the various cultures of diverse areas of the Empire. Robyn Tracey provides information on Syria helpful for understanding one base of early gentile Christianity that may have also produced one or more of our Gospels (although much of her information will be of interest mainly to specialists). New Testament scholars reading Alanna Nobbs’s essay on Cyprus will be especially interested in the debated question of external evidence for the Sergius Paullus of Acts 13. Gill’s work on Macedonia will be useful in studies of Acts 17 and the Thessalonian correspondence, as will be G. H. R. Horsley’s helpful analysis of inscriptions regarding the politarchs. I believe Gill work on Achaia will supply more grist for New Testament study, however; it reflects a thorough command of secondary literature on Greco-Roman sources not generally available to New Testament researchers. Andrew D. Clarke’s chapter on Italy and Rome employs recent archaeological sources and many sources rarely used by New Testament scholars. Paul Trebilco’s chapter on Asia will prove one of the most useful chapters to the New Testament scholar, especially in researching Acts 19. James M. Scott provides the most useful treatment I have seen on Acts 1:8’s “ends of the earth,” again marshalling an impressive array of primary data with which New Testament scholars rarely work, as well as covering territory more familiar to most of us. Although many others have suspected that Acts 1:8 provides a program for geographical and cultural expansion in Acts, Scott provides new insights into the structure of the book, which scholars should seriously consider.
The volume also includes some surprises, at least for some of us. On the basis of first-century epigraphic evidence R. A. Kearsley challenges the view traditionally accepted by most New Testament scholars (including myself) that had associated Asiarchs with the imperial cult.
At other points, the volume’s research reaffirms views many of us have held, for instance, G. Walter Hansen’s support for the South Galatian theory.
Although Stanley Porter is a superb scholar, some will demur from his conclusions in his excursus on the “we” passages. When dealing with classical sources and modern secondary literature on Acts, Porter demonstrates his skill: he thoroughly critiques the view that Acts is a novel and the idea that “we” represents a fictitious literary device. When he turns to the narrative in Acts, however, he concludes that the abrupt appearance and disappearance of “we” at points in the narrative points away from parallels to “we” in historical narrative and points rather to use of a source. The source may be accurate, but Porter thinks it is probably not Luke’s own journal. I would argue the opposite—that Luke is too skillful a writer to have left a “we” source unidentified if it did not include himself, especially given the relative stylistic evenness of his narrative. (Porter, following Lüdemann, does discern some stylistic differences in the narratives, but this depends mainly on hapax legomena, which could be attributed to Luke’s use of his own earlier work or to the differing content with emphasis on sea travel.) Nevertheless, this excursus forms a provocative conclusion for an important book.