A Second-Century Date
A Second-Century Date
A second-century date for the Acts is associated especially with the TQbingen School, a number of like-thinking scholars from the famous German university, whose best-known member was F. C. Baur. These scholars attributed to Acts a definite theological tendency—a desire to reconcile the opposing early Christian factions of Jewish Christianity, whose representative was Peter, and Gentile Christianity, whose representative was Paul. The author of Acts plays down the differences between these factions, making Peter more Gentile and Paul more Jewish than they really were. He thus prepares the way for a middle-of-the-road position, the position of the "old catholic church.” This attempt at reconciliation could have been made only after sufficient time had elapsed for these factions to have mellowed, and so the TQbingen School dated Acts in the middle of the second century. 24 While remnants of its approach remain, the TQbingen interpretation of early Christian history and the place of the book of Acts within this history are no longer defended. Scholars such as J. B. Lightfoot demonstrated that the apostolic fathers of the late first century reveal none of the factionalism and polemics that Baur and his disciples attributed to this period in the history of the church. An impressive ideological synthesis, the TQbingen approach was without historical underpinnings. But there are still some who date Acts in the second century. One reason for doing so has been the belief that the author of Acts depended on Josephus’s Antiquities (written c. A.D. 94). 25 But dependence of Acts on Josephus is most unlikely. 26 J. C. O’Neill argues on the basis of theological parallels to 1 Clement, the Pastoral Epistles, and especially Justin that Acts must be dated in the period 115-30. 27 But the parallels O’Neill finds are both questionable and susceptible of a different interpretation. Few scholars now think that Acts is a second-century document.