A Date of 80-95
A Date of 80-95
Most scholars now date Acts in the 80s, or a bit later. 28 Acts cannot be dated any earlier than this, it is argued, because it shows signs of having been written some years after the first volume of Luke’s work, the gospel, which cannot be dated before A.D.
70. Furthermore, Acts cannot be dated much later than 95 or so because of its optimistic attitude toward the Roman government—an attitude that would have been inconceivable after the persecution of Domitian in the middle 90s—and because the author of Acts does not know about the letters of Paul, which were collected and made generally available at the end of the first century.
None of these reasons is convincing. A date after A.D. 70 for Luke’s gospel is based on two assumptions: that the gospel reflects the actual circumstances of the Roman sack of Jerusalem in 70, and that the gospel of Mark, which Luke has probably used, must be dated in the middle or late 60s. But neither of these assumptions is valid (see above, respectively, the sections Date in chap. 4, and see chap. 7). Acts does not mention the letters of Paul, and the author probably has not used them in writing the book. But this may be because Acts is early, rather than late, or because it was simply not Luke’s purpose to refer to the letters. Acts is indeed generally optimistic about Rome’s attitude toward the church. Yet one could argue on this basis that Acts must be dated before the infamous persecution of Christians by the Emperor Nero in Rome in 64-65. So while the arguments for dating Acts after 80 are not persuasive, the arguments for dating Acts before 100 suggest, in fact, a date long before the turn of the century—indeed, a date in the early or middle 60s.