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Acts and Christian Beginnings: The Acts Seminar Report
The Acts of the Apostles is not history.
Acts was long thought to be a first-century document, and its author Luke to be a disciple of Paul—thus an eyewitness or acquaintance of eyewitnesses to nascent Christianity. Acts was considered history, pure and simple. But the Acts Seminar, a decade-long collaborative project by scholars affiliated with the Westar Institute, concluded that dates from the second century. That conclusion directly challenges the view of Acts as history and raises a host of new questions, addressed in this final report.
The Acts Seminar began deliberations in 2001, with the task of going through the canonical Acts of the Apostles from beginning to end and evaluating it for historical accuracy.
Acts was long thought to be a first-century document, and its author Luke to be a disciple of Paul—thus an eyewitness or acquaintance of eyewitnesses to nascent Christianity. Acts was considered history, pure and simple. But the Acts Seminar, a decade-long collaborative project by scholars affiliated with the Westar Institute, concluded that dates from the second century. That conclusion directly challenges the view of Acts as history and raises a host of new questions, addressed in this final report.
The Acts Seminar began deliberations in 2001, with the task of going through the canonical Acts of the Apostles from beginning to end and evaluating it for historical accuracy.
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550 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 23, 2013
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May 31, 2024
THE REPORT OF THE “ACTS SEMINAR” (i.e., the successor to the “Jesus Seminar”)
The Preface to this 2013 book explains, “The Acts Seminar met from March 2000 to March 2011… It presented its research twice yearly at the fall and spring meetings of the Westar institute. Westar Fellows… deliberated on the papers presented at each meeting and voted on the recommendations contained therein. A typical meeting would be made up on 25 to 30 scholars (Fellows) observed by a gallery of approximately 100 to 250 attendees from the general public… The original goal for the project was to publish a red-letter edition of Acts on the model of the red-letter editions of the Gospels as published by the Jesus Seminar…. Well into the project, however, we began to realize that a red-letter edition of Acts was not feasible, since the Acts text cannot be broken down into its traditions. Instead, we adopted a format in which votes were taken not on traditions within the text of Acts but on components of its story.”
The Introduction continues, “The Acts Seminar was formed as an attempt to bring order to the story of Acts as history… The Acts Seminar was charged with the task to develop methods for determining the reliability of Acts and produce a comprehensive guide to Acts as history… Members of the Acts seminar began with a perspective firmly embedded in current scholarship… we knew that Acts needed to be critically assessed, but we did not anticipate how much we would have to rethink our understanding of Acts in order to do our job responsible…
“Here is a summary of those accomplishments: 1. The author of Acts was an accomplished storyteller/theologian who wrote a story with a decidedly apologetic purpose… 2. Acts was written in the early decades of the second century… 3. The author of Acts used the letters of Paul as one of his sources… 4. … no other reliable historical source can be definitively identified for Acts… 5. Jerusalem was not the birthplace of Christianity… 6. Acts can no longer be considered an independent source for the life and mission of Paul… 7. Acts constructed its story on the model of the epic and related literature… 8. The author of Acts created names for his characters as a story-telling device… 9. Acts constructed its story to fit ideological goals… 10. No longer can Acts be assumed to be historical unless proven otherwise… While Acts is highly questionable as a resource for first-century Christianity, it is a significant resource for understanding the issues and shape of the Christianity of its own day.”
It asserts of the dating of Acts, “Based on the above data as derived from the text of Acts, the most probable range of dates is ca. 110-120. Previous scholarship has tended to date Acts ca. 85, but a variety of recent studies have challenged this view and supported an early second-century dating.” (Pg. 6)
Richard Pervo says in an essay on the Speeches in Acts, “Ancient writers had a great deal of creative freedom when constructing a speech for a narrative, even if it was a historical narrative and even if a report of some sort was used as the source of a speech… In several respects, however, the speeches in Acts differ from the way speeches are employed by ancient historians. For example, speeches recorded by the historians tend to stand apart from the narrative, while those in Acts are normally part of the narrative… Among the reasons for attributing the speeches in Acts to Luke are the following: (1) Greco-Roman antiquity presumed that speeches included in works of literature, including history, were the work of the author rather than the putative speaker. (2) The speeches in Acts are Lukan in language, style and thought. (3) The speeches often play a role in the narrative. (4) The majority of the speeches are interdependent: They build upon and depend upon one another (5) The speeches establish the unity of the narrative of Acts and the continuity of its plot and thought. (6) The speeches are directed to the readers of the book rather than to the dramatic audiences in the text. (7) In the ancient world means and motives for preserving the speeches did not exist.” (Pg. 45-46)
Dennis E. Smith says of miracles, “Miracle stories as a literary genre were common in the ancient world and functioned as the means to promote emperors, philosophers, and other religious leaders as individuals marked with the power of the divine. They occur in early Christian literature, both canonical and noncanonical, as a means to counter the propaganda of their competitors in the culture. Though some individuals, including Jesus, may have accomplished healings that could be considered miraculous by standards of the day, the stories themselves must be judged as a group. The Jesus Seminar determined that the miracles stories of Jesus are nonhistorical as a group, but that Jesus was likely to have been an exorcist.” (Pg. 58-59)
They note, “Gal 1:15-24 … conflicts with the Acts account in which Paul (a) went to Damascus to receive instruction from Ananias … (b) preached to Jews in Damascus, where they plotted to kill him and he had to escape in a basket, and (c) went to Jerusalem, where he was introduced by Barnabas to the apostles as a whole, where he preached, and where once again his life was threatened so that he had to be rescued by ‘the believers. There are radical differences in these two stories. Luke’s version can be accounted for as part of his program to emphasize Jewish opposition and persecution, as well as to promote the idea that all mission work was undertaken under the leadership of the Jerusalem apostles… the Seminar voted to accept Paul’s account as historical and Luke’s account as fictional.” (Pg. 112-113)
Of the “we” passages, they explain, “The we-passages appear and disappear abruptly at various points throughout the latter half of Acts and do not lend themselves to any one simple explanation. The Fellows found that the most persuasive explanations were those that identified these enigmatic passages as literary motifs used in imitation of ancient literary models… One such motif was the use of the first person when narrating a sea voyage, which the Fellows affirmed as a cogent explanation for this motif in Acts… As a literary motif, the use of the first person in these passages represents an authorial pseudo-identity as a companion of Paul. This device allowed the author to identify himself and his community with the mission of Paul, and, in the process, connect the mission of Paul, who is very specifically not an apostle in Acts, with a post-apostolic period.” (Pg. 186-187)
Shelly Matthews states, “This author’s treatment of Jews and Judaism... may be understood as his attempt to carve out a legitimate place for his largely … Gentile community in the face of accusations that these Jesus followers constituted a new and thus potentially subversive religion. He does to by appropriating ‘things Jewish’ for his own group… Pious Jewish practices and institutions such as prayer, alms-giving, Pharisaic erudition, the temple, and the law, are most often depicted favorably as signs of the movement’s antiquity and stability… Thus, Acts may be understood to lay the foundations for subsequent Christian supersessionist claims: Christians, because they accepted the Messiah rejected by the Jews, have surpassed the Jews as the chosen people of God.” (Pg. 268-269)
They note, “that Paul was from Tarsus and was a Roman citizen, have been considered basic historical details about Paul throughout Christian history, but either detail is found in Paul’s letters. There is no credible source behind the story itself; it is clearly a creation of Luke, and the citizenship detail is an essential part of the plot Luke has created… Roman citizenship was based on wealth and status, of a level that is highly improbable for Paul, even for the Paul of Acts, who is pictured as a craftsman. Furthermore, Luke’s plot device, that his citizenship saved Paul from a flogging, was unknown to Paul himself, who referred to three beatings he had received at various times in his ministry…” (Pg. 275-276)
They ask, “Why does Luke neglect to follow his own narrative arc and tell the story of Paul’s release? Scholars have long concluded that the likely reason was that Paul’s execution by Roman authorities while in Rome was well known to Luke’s readers. Yet it is only by reading between the lines in the last scene in Acts… that we can draw a tentative conclusion about the death of Paul as a Roman execution… Yet it is a story Acts refuses to tall, even though it has been implicitly promised… in this case Acts … becomes a potentially reliable historical source based on what it does not say.” (Pg. 326)
They conclude, “previous scholarship often found Acts to be a mostly reliable historical resource. In contrast, our presuppositions tend to rule out all previous methods for analyzing Acts as history. Once one understands Acts as a second-century document, the methodology and the burden of proof completely change. From this perspective, we now consider Acts to be unreliable unless proven otherwise.” (Pg. 329)
This book will be of great interest to those who generally agree with the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar, and other contemporary scholarship.
The Preface to this 2013 book explains, “The Acts Seminar met from March 2000 to March 2011… It presented its research twice yearly at the fall and spring meetings of the Westar institute. Westar Fellows… deliberated on the papers presented at each meeting and voted on the recommendations contained therein. A typical meeting would be made up on 25 to 30 scholars (Fellows) observed by a gallery of approximately 100 to 250 attendees from the general public… The original goal for the project was to publish a red-letter edition of Acts on the model of the red-letter editions of the Gospels as published by the Jesus Seminar…. Well into the project, however, we began to realize that a red-letter edition of Acts was not feasible, since the Acts text cannot be broken down into its traditions. Instead, we adopted a format in which votes were taken not on traditions within the text of Acts but on components of its story.”
The Introduction continues, “The Acts Seminar was formed as an attempt to bring order to the story of Acts as history… The Acts Seminar was charged with the task to develop methods for determining the reliability of Acts and produce a comprehensive guide to Acts as history… Members of the Acts seminar began with a perspective firmly embedded in current scholarship… we knew that Acts needed to be critically assessed, but we did not anticipate how much we would have to rethink our understanding of Acts in order to do our job responsible…
“Here is a summary of those accomplishments: 1. The author of Acts was an accomplished storyteller/theologian who wrote a story with a decidedly apologetic purpose… 2. Acts was written in the early decades of the second century… 3. The author of Acts used the letters of Paul as one of his sources… 4. … no other reliable historical source can be definitively identified for Acts… 5. Jerusalem was not the birthplace of Christianity… 6. Acts can no longer be considered an independent source for the life and mission of Paul… 7. Acts constructed its story on the model of the epic and related literature… 8. The author of Acts created names for his characters as a story-telling device… 9. Acts constructed its story to fit ideological goals… 10. No longer can Acts be assumed to be historical unless proven otherwise… While Acts is highly questionable as a resource for first-century Christianity, it is a significant resource for understanding the issues and shape of the Christianity of its own day.”
It asserts of the dating of Acts, “Based on the above data as derived from the text of Acts, the most probable range of dates is ca. 110-120. Previous scholarship has tended to date Acts ca. 85, but a variety of recent studies have challenged this view and supported an early second-century dating.” (Pg. 6)
Richard Pervo says in an essay on the Speeches in Acts, “Ancient writers had a great deal of creative freedom when constructing a speech for a narrative, even if it was a historical narrative and even if a report of some sort was used as the source of a speech… In several respects, however, the speeches in Acts differ from the way speeches are employed by ancient historians. For example, speeches recorded by the historians tend to stand apart from the narrative, while those in Acts are normally part of the narrative… Among the reasons for attributing the speeches in Acts to Luke are the following: (1) Greco-Roman antiquity presumed that speeches included in works of literature, including history, were the work of the author rather than the putative speaker. (2) The speeches in Acts are Lukan in language, style and thought. (3) The speeches often play a role in the narrative. (4) The majority of the speeches are interdependent: They build upon and depend upon one another (5) The speeches establish the unity of the narrative of Acts and the continuity of its plot and thought. (6) The speeches are directed to the readers of the book rather than to the dramatic audiences in the text. (7) In the ancient world means and motives for preserving the speeches did not exist.” (Pg. 45-46)
Dennis E. Smith says of miracles, “Miracle stories as a literary genre were common in the ancient world and functioned as the means to promote emperors, philosophers, and other religious leaders as individuals marked with the power of the divine. They occur in early Christian literature, both canonical and noncanonical, as a means to counter the propaganda of their competitors in the culture. Though some individuals, including Jesus, may have accomplished healings that could be considered miraculous by standards of the day, the stories themselves must be judged as a group. The Jesus Seminar determined that the miracles stories of Jesus are nonhistorical as a group, but that Jesus was likely to have been an exorcist.” (Pg. 58-59)
They note, “Gal 1:15-24 … conflicts with the Acts account in which Paul (a) went to Damascus to receive instruction from Ananias … (b) preached to Jews in Damascus, where they plotted to kill him and he had to escape in a basket, and (c) went to Jerusalem, where he was introduced by Barnabas to the apostles as a whole, where he preached, and where once again his life was threatened so that he had to be rescued by ‘the believers. There are radical differences in these two stories. Luke’s version can be accounted for as part of his program to emphasize Jewish opposition and persecution, as well as to promote the idea that all mission work was undertaken under the leadership of the Jerusalem apostles… the Seminar voted to accept Paul’s account as historical and Luke’s account as fictional.” (Pg. 112-113)
Of the “we” passages, they explain, “The we-passages appear and disappear abruptly at various points throughout the latter half of Acts and do not lend themselves to any one simple explanation. The Fellows found that the most persuasive explanations were those that identified these enigmatic passages as literary motifs used in imitation of ancient literary models… One such motif was the use of the first person when narrating a sea voyage, which the Fellows affirmed as a cogent explanation for this motif in Acts… As a literary motif, the use of the first person in these passages represents an authorial pseudo-identity as a companion of Paul. This device allowed the author to identify himself and his community with the mission of Paul, and, in the process, connect the mission of Paul, who is very specifically not an apostle in Acts, with a post-apostolic period.” (Pg. 186-187)
Shelly Matthews states, “This author’s treatment of Jews and Judaism... may be understood as his attempt to carve out a legitimate place for his largely … Gentile community in the face of accusations that these Jesus followers constituted a new and thus potentially subversive religion. He does to by appropriating ‘things Jewish’ for his own group… Pious Jewish practices and institutions such as prayer, alms-giving, Pharisaic erudition, the temple, and the law, are most often depicted favorably as signs of the movement’s antiquity and stability… Thus, Acts may be understood to lay the foundations for subsequent Christian supersessionist claims: Christians, because they accepted the Messiah rejected by the Jews, have surpassed the Jews as the chosen people of God.” (Pg. 268-269)
They note, “that Paul was from Tarsus and was a Roman citizen, have been considered basic historical details about Paul throughout Christian history, but either detail is found in Paul’s letters. There is no credible source behind the story itself; it is clearly a creation of Luke, and the citizenship detail is an essential part of the plot Luke has created… Roman citizenship was based on wealth and status, of a level that is highly improbable for Paul, even for the Paul of Acts, who is pictured as a craftsman. Furthermore, Luke’s plot device, that his citizenship saved Paul from a flogging, was unknown to Paul himself, who referred to three beatings he had received at various times in his ministry…” (Pg. 275-276)
They ask, “Why does Luke neglect to follow his own narrative arc and tell the story of Paul’s release? Scholars have long concluded that the likely reason was that Paul’s execution by Roman authorities while in Rome was well known to Luke’s readers. Yet it is only by reading between the lines in the last scene in Acts… that we can draw a tentative conclusion about the death of Paul as a Roman execution… Yet it is a story Acts refuses to tall, even though it has been implicitly promised… in this case Acts … becomes a potentially reliable historical source based on what it does not say.” (Pg. 326)
They conclude, “previous scholarship often found Acts to be a mostly reliable historical resource. In contrast, our presuppositions tend to rule out all previous methods for analyzing Acts as history. Once one understands Acts as a second-century document, the methodology and the burden of proof completely change. From this perspective, we now consider Acts to be unreliable unless proven otherwise.” (Pg. 329)
This book will be of great interest to those who generally agree with the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar, and other contemporary scholarship.
June 25, 2016
This book is what it claims to be - a report by the fellows of the Acts Seminar (a follow-up of the Jesus Seminar). As such it identifies and discusses, at a high level, the findings of their studies, papers and the like. It is highly readable and understandable by a layperson such as myself, but others will possibly criticise it for not being particularly academic in its approach.
The report proceeds sequentially through the Book of Acts, providing an (often idiosyncratic) translation of a passage, followed by commentary, and "A Search for History". Interspersed are essays by some of the Seminar's scholars, which are frequently illuminating.
Their conclusion - that Acts is an early 2nd Century document, based loosely on Paul's letters, with very little historical reliability - leaves us to search further as to the true origins of Christianity.
The report proceeds sequentially through the Book of Acts, providing an (often idiosyncratic) translation of a passage, followed by commentary, and "A Search for History". Interspersed are essays by some of the Seminar's scholars, which are frequently illuminating.
Their conclusion - that Acts is an early 2nd Century document, based loosely on Paul's letters, with very little historical reliability - leaves us to search further as to the true origins of Christianity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews