Section 55
David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.¹⁸⁷⁶
Luke’s Book of Acts is currently generating a flurry of commentaries. In addition to those recently released at the time of the writing of this review (including Bock, Marguerat, Pervo, and Parsons) many forthcoming commentaries will likely offer some distinctive and useful emphases; for example, one may expect detailed literary-theological interest from Joel Green; detailed attention to the Greek text from Stanley Porter and Steve Walton; and Greco-Roman context from Eckhard Schnabel, Loveday Alexander, myself, and others. Without “specializing” in any of these approaches, Peterson’s commentary incorporates many of the most useful elements of each, making it helpful for a wide range of readers. (That the Greek is transliterated where he uses it will also aid many readers; the TNIV is the basis for Peterson’s exposition.) While also a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature, the commentary will thus prove useful as a textbook and for educated pastors.
Peterson’s conclusions on introductory issues (97 pages) are fairly mainstream in current Acts scholarship, certainly among current commentators. Peterson follows strong early attestation for Luke as the author and treats him as an eyewitness in the “we” narratives; Vielhauer and others have overplayed the contrast between the epistolary Paul, which reflects a very limited sample of Paul’s thought, and Luke’s summary of aspects of Paul’s ministry. He finds a date in the mid-70s reasonable (while allowing also for “a good case” for a date before 64). To a great extent he treats Acts’ genre as historical monograph (the majority single approach), highlighting especially Witherington’s arguments. At the same time, he allows (in my opinion rightly) for Luke’s Gospel to function as a different genre, namely biography. He follows especially Satterthwaite on rhetoric in Acts and Hemer on its historical reliability. He normally follows the Alexandrian text, while allowing that the western expansions sometimes include reliable information. He emphasizes the narrative unity of Luke-Acts (drawing particularly on Tannehill and Spencer), which proves fruitful for his theological approach.
Peterson gives particularly laudatory attention to the theology of Acts. He treats Luke’s theology proper, Christology, and pneumatology. (Peterson emphasizes the salvific dimension of Luke’s pneumatology, with Turner and key texts like 2:38–39; he sometimes minimizes, though without ignoring, empowerment for mission, the emphasis of Menzies, which appears in key passages like 1:8 and 2:17–18.) He highlights Luke’s theology of salvation, the gospel, mission, and the church, articulates a nuanced understanding of Luke’s theology of the servant and atonement, and also treats the kingdom’s confrontation with magic and the demonic. He emphasizes the theology communicated by the speeches, but also recognizes theology in the narrative. He rightly sees the gentile mission, unfolded geographically and developed through individuals, as the book’s thrust. He looks for repeated themes in the narrative and their theological implications. He is also certainly correct to recognize the value of the speeches for theological interpretation of the narrative.
Given his commendable theological emphasis, Peterson might have further emphasized another aspect of ancient historiography, namely that historians normally intended their works to provide models. That is, Acts conveys not only information about early Christian mission but (as Peterson concurs) encouragement to engage in it, especially given its open ending; the mission to the ends of the earth continues. For this reason, his reticence to find charismatic phenomena in Acts as at least partly paradigmatic patterns (apparently even for many settings involving ground-breaking evangelism) seems to me formulated more against contemporary concerns than from Luke’s theology (though Peterson allows the continuing of such phenomena). At the same time, he is clearly correct that Acts focuses on specific leading characters, whose activity is not a detailed model for all individual readers.
One’s choice of conversation partners often reveals something about a book’s orientation. Of the some 300 authors (and more works) that Peterson cites, Barrett, Bruce, Johnson, Marshall, Spencer, and Tannehill appear frequently; somewhat less, but still frequently for their size, he engages shorter commentaries by Gaventa and Longenecker. He engages more radical scholars like Haenchen much less (also Pervo, though Peterson had access only to Pervo’s articles, as the latter’s commentary was not yet available when Peterson was writing). Peterson’s conclusions in the introduction frequently follow Ben Witherington’s commentary on Acts; although he does not cite Witherington more than Barrett or Bruce, he concurs with his approach quite often. He helpfully interacts with important works in Eerdmans’ multivolume Book of Acts in its First-Century Setting (e.g., Rapske appears over 50 times), though not evenly (Levinskaya appears only twice). Fitting the work’s orientation, he appropriately cites Hemer over thirty times and Sherwin-White over twenty (though this is far less than commentators; he cites Witherington roughly 300 times).
Surprisingly, Talbert’s 1997 commentary, though listed among commentaries, is not cited at all (Peterson does cite some of his other works); omission of works by Plümacher is also somewhat surprising, though this may reflect the primarily Anglophone audience the commentary envisions. The most serious omission is his failure to cite Fitzmyer’s major 1998 commentary on Acts, which does not even appear in the selected commentary list. Even if the bulk of Peterson’s work was finished several years before its publication (which would not be unusual), Fitzmyer merited more interaction (by comparison, David Pao’s excellent but later work appears eleven times). Some other works relevant to his discussions, such as Clare Rothschild’s work on rhetoric in ancient historiography (2004) or Eckhard Schnabel’s work on early Christian mission (2004), do not appear, but these works possibly circulated too recently for incorporation. Despite such omissions, Peterson’s copious notes will readily attest that in general he engages current scholarship extensively and commendably. As he apologizes in his preface (and as every commentator will concur), the secondary literature today is too vast for any writer to engage it all. (Already well over four decades ago Mattill’s bibliography listed 6,646 sources.)
In the commentary proper, Peterson draws on the full range of background, while highlighting especially the earlier biblical narrative and promises that inform Luke’s theology and approach. After introducing each section he elucidates verses (or where relevant, clusters of verses) in greater detail. He addresses major questions in each passage and provides an enormous amount of useful detail in the 624 pages of commentary proper. Because he engages the most useful questions and approaches without digressing or bogging down in detailed excurses, this work will prove a valuable textbook for courses on Acts and a boon to busy pastors.