Sunday
Sunday
Luke’s Two Volumes
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven.
Acts 1:1–2
It is almost universally believed that Luke’s “former book” was his Gospel. Indeed, what Luke has bequeathed to us is not so much two books as two parts of one book. Certainly, the preface to his Gospel introduces both parts. In it, as we have already seen, Luke refers to certain events that had taken place, which the apostles had witnessed and passed on to the next generation, which Luke himself had “carefully investigated … from the beginning” (Luke 1:3), and which he had decided to put into writing. As an educated doctor he wrote polished Greek, and since on several occasions he was Paul’s traveling companion (drawing attention to his presence by slipping into an unobtrusive “we”), he was an eyewitness of numerous events in the Acts. A. N. Sherwin-White, formerly reader in ancient history at Oxford University, reached this conclusion: “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming.”1
A caution is appropriate at this point, however. In reading the Acts we must not idealize the early church as if it had no blemishes. As we shall see, it had many.
What, then, shall we call this book that we are going to study for the next seven weeks? The popular title is “The Book of Acts” and is justified by a fourth-century codex. But it is hardly appropriate, since it does not indicate whose acts are in mind. “Acts of the Holy Spirit” makes a valid point but omits the human beings through whom the Spirit was working. The traditional title since the twentieth century has been “The Acts of [the] Apostles” with or without the definite article, and certainly apostles dominate the stage. But none of these does justice to the book’s first verse, which attributes the recorded works and words to Jesus. The most accurate (though cumbersome) title would be something like “The Continuing Words and Deeds of Jesus by His Spirit through His Apostles.”
For further reading: Luke 1:1–4