WHEN WAS THE BOOK OF ACTS WRITTEN?

The Composition Date for the Book of Acts

The book of Acts is essential to understanding the birth and early growth of the first-century church, and for the most part it is straightforward and not hard to understand.  However, some historians and scholars disagree about its historical accuracy and when it was written, and as you research Acts you will be confronted with some of these disagreements.  A major disagreement concerns the year that Luke finish writing and publicize the book of Acts. This blog argues that the early date of Acts is the most defensible and reasonable conclusion with respect to when it was written. There are two compelling reasons why Acts should be viewed as having been written before the outbreak of the Neronian persecutions (ca. early AD 65 or early AD 66). First, Luke ended his history of the early church with a description of Paul’s condition, writing that, “For two whole years he lived in his own rented place and welcomed everyone who came to him. He continued to preach the kingdom of God and to teach about the Lord Jesus Christ with perfect boldness and freedom” (Acts 28.30-31). To be sure, as Luke wrote Act if he was aware of Paul’s fate and the Empire’s attempt to eradicate Christianity, then ending the book with such a cheery description would have been unthinkable, if for no other reason that such an ending would make Luke appear completely incompetent since most of his readers would have either already known about Paul’s fate, or would eventually learn what truly happened to him. Some argue, however, that Paul’s inevitable fate was not important to Luke, and that Luke’s purpose was more “theological” than “historical.”  This is not a well-defended position simply because the book contains far more historical data than explanations concerning theological subjects. Moreover, the book is titled “Acts of the Apostles” instead of “The Beliefs of the Apostles,” and its title is “Acts” precisely because it overwhelmingly focuses upon the activities, accomplishments, and deeds of the early church and its leaders.  Of course it also contains theological content, but this is unavoidable since the focus and purpose of the church is theological in nature.  Nevertheless, if Luke was primarily concerned with the church’s theology, then more content within Acts would look more like what is found in Acts 15 (i.e., the Jerusalem Council), but it does not. Luke’s primary purpose in Acts is clearly more descriptive than prescriptive, in other words he focused predominantly on explaining and documenting the church’s birth and subsequent growth from a small sect within Judaism, to its inclusions of Gentiles, and to its ultimate arrival to the heart of the Empire.

A second reason for concluding that Acts was composed before the outbreak of the Neronian persecutions is that Luke placed a high value upon persecution and martyrdom accounts and included them within his history of the early church whenever he could. This is obvious from his inclusion of the martyrdoms of both Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and apostle James the brother of John and a son of Zebedee; as well as various riot accounts found throughout the book.  If Luke had known about the martyrdoms of both Paul and Peter, arguably the two most important leaders of the first-century church, then he would have assuredly provided accounts documenting their deaths, or at least references to them in his history of the church (not to mention the martyrdom of Jesus’ brother James, ca. AD 62). But instead of references to the deaths of these significant leaders, Luke provided travel records throughout Acts (e.g., Acts 27.1-28.10), some of which are rather uneventful.  Additionally, not only does the book show no hint of the fates of these important leaders, but as Carson and Moo observed, the exact opposite is true, Luke seems to portray a rather positive outlook for the church’s leaders, as well as a healthy relationship between the church and the Roman Empire (CM, Introduction to the New Testament, 298-300).  Again, such an outlook would have been completely inconceivable if Acts was written any time after the beginning of Neronian persecutions. In fact, once Nero condemned Christianity as subversive and began targeting its leaders for execution, then Christianity became an illegal religion its eyes of the Empire. Moreover, Nero’s ruling against Christianity became the legal basis for all of the Empire’s future persecutions of church over the next couple of centuries. Consequently, if Luke wrote Acts sometime after the cessation of the Neronian persecutions, then his book would not have improved the image of the church, but would have actually endangered individual churches and other Christians by documenting where they could be found and who were some of its remaining leaders. We should credit Luke with having more intelligence than to have written such a potentially dangerous book if he was aware of the Empire’s lethal hostility towards the church.  The Empire had claimed the lives of some of his closest friends, what could he have possibly gained by composing a work that would have only endangered others?

Think about it this way, if 3 years ago someone wrote a book about the rise of Isis and its condition, then the book would have concluded with some ambiguity with respect to its future.  However, if one wrote a book on Isis 10 years from now, it would be inconceivable to not explain or at least reference its collapse.  Of course, Isis’ ultimate defeat would not have to be the book’s main purpose, but to completely ignore its demise as an organized geo-political military force would be a rather glaring omission, one that would make any author appear completely out of touch.  Nevertheless, some scholars still make speculative conjectures promoting a late composition for the book of Acts; however, the more reasonable conclusion is that Luke completed it near the end Paul’s first imprisonment or soon after his release, sometime in the early to mid AD 60s, probably no earlier than AD 62.  Additionally, such a date also has obviously significant ramifications for estimating the date for Luke’s composition of his Gospel.  Many secular scholars who have a biased against the supernatural and prophetic natural of Luke’s Gospel must date the composition of Acts later since they also date the Gospel of Luke considerably later. Since Acts was composed after Luke’s Gospel, then in their view the book of Acts must also be dated much later as well.  Nevertheless, such conjectures and speculations are not well defended given the available historical evidence.

Doc.

Copyright © Monte Shanks, 2010

 

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INSPIRATION, LITERARY INTERDEPENDENCE, AND THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM

What Does Literary Dependence Look Like and Does It Negatively Impact the Doctrine of Inspiration?

While researching the topic of the Synoptic Gospels one is often confronted with confusing concepts, such as “Literary Independence” and “Literary Interdependence.” Consequently, I want to define and explain what these terms mean and their implications with respect to the doctrine of Inspiration.  “Literary Independence” simply means that as the Gospel authors wrote their respective works that none of them relied upon previously “written” material from the other Gospels. Consequently, all of the canonical Gospels are literarily independent of the other Gospels.  “Literary Interdependence” simply means that as the authors of the canonical Gospels wrote their respective works, they that at times utilized (i.e., copied and/or redacted) materials found in the other Gospels that proceeded them. This possible “literary dependence” upon preceding Gospels does not mean that these writers cease to be “authors” in their own right; it only recognizes that there is an observable “literary relationship” in their work(s) with the Gospel(s) that preceded them.  This issue or “question” is especially acute when researching the Synoptic Gospels.

A question some may have at this point is: how does this impact the doctrine of Inspiration? There are some that are of the opinion that if scholars affirm literary interdependence they are impugning the doctrine of Inspiration.  Additionally, if they are unfamiliar with Koine Greek, then some may find it difficult to understand how anyone can detect literary dependence.  First, I wish to address the concept of detecting literary dependence; and afterwards tackle the issue of Inspiration with respect to this observable phenomenon.  Detecting literary dependence in Greek is not any different that detecting it in English writings.  For example, if one uses different color markers to highlight common words and sentence constructions found in some parallel passages from the Synoptic Gospels, then they will find some evidence of literary interdependence.  However, what maybe observable in English translations of the Synoptic Gospels is extremely more detectable in the original Greek.  The evidence for a literary relationship is more observable simply because of the idiosyncrasies of Koine Greek, which is a more complex language than our modern English. With this in mind, it is still possible that the Gospels writers were familiar with common oral traditions, and later they were independently inspired to record those same traditions. However, when oral proclamations are transcribed into literature they generally undergo some stylistic revisions; this is generally self-evident simply because no one writes the same way they speak.  I have experienced this first hand with respect to my own sermons, sermons that I later composed into written lessons or blogs.  Unless one is a court reporter (and the Gospel authors did not function as such), no one writes to a group of people the same way they speak to a specific audience.  Nevertheless, some affirm that the Holy Spirit inspired the Synoptic authors to write their respective Gospels independently of one another—Gospels that not only contain the same data, but when compared side by side are eerily similar because in many cases they record events and speeches with the exact same vocabulary, style, word order, chronology, as well as the same parenthetical statements (e.g., Mark and Matthew’s “let the reader understand” statement, which is something one would not say to an audience as they are listening [Mk 13.14 & Matt 24.16]).  Consequently, they argue that none of the Gospel authors relied upon any previously written Gospels as they wrote their respective work.

For the purpose of explaining why literary independence is not the best explanation for how the Synoptic Gospels were composed, I have provided 4 English sentences below.  First, please read all four, and then after reading them identify the sentence that appears to be the most likely candidate for being “literarily dependent” upon the first sentence (it is assumed that the first sentence is the original and oldest).

1. The drunken man kicked his Rottweiler after it bit him, and then the dog ran away and never returned.
2. The dog bit a man and then ran away after the man hit it.
3. A vicious dog was kicked by a powerful man that he bit and he immediately ran away and was never seen again.
4. The intoxicated man kicked his Rottweiler after it bit him, immediately afterwards the dog ran away and never returned.

The obvious choice of which sentence is literarily dependent upon sentence #1 is sentence #4.  Please note, all four sentences describe the same event; however, sentences 2 and 3 do not provide all of the relevant data and are written in entirely different styles.  Additionally, sentence 3 was not well written and is open to some misunderstanding; nevertheless, after comparing it with the other 3 sentences one can more precisely glean its meaning.  The difference between sentences #1 and #4 has to do with the elegance of their vocabulary, not the data contained in each sentence.  Moreover, both sentences contain the same basic structure and flow.  However, anyone can claim that all 4 records are dependent upon the same oral account of the event.  Nevertheless, with respect to the question of which sentences are literarily dependent upon one another, the evidence suggests that there is a connection between sentences #1 and #4.  What is obviously to you concerning these English sentences would be significantly more transparent for sentences written in Koine Greek.  The fact is that with Koine Greek it is vastly easier rather than harder to detect literary dependence given the nature, grammar, and peculiarities of the Greek language. For example, in Koine Greek where a word is found in a sentence is of little importance to the translation of the actual sentence; whereas in English the order of words in a sentence is extremely important (e.g., subject, verb, and direct object).  So, if in a sentence the same words appear in the same order and in the same grammatical construction in two different Greek works, let alone entire paragraphs or chapters, then it is a good bet that one is dependent on the other—the question then becomes, which was written first (i.e., which Gospel was a “source” for the other Gospel).  And just as literary dependence is obvious with respect to the two English sentences above; it would be much more obvious if such a pattern were repeated throughout an entire book, such as the Synoptic Gospels. The fact is that much of the material in the Synoptic Gospels employs the exact same vocabulary, grammar, and word order; thus scholars justifiably conclude that there is some degree of literary dependence between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Now to the more important question: does literary dependence jeopardize the doctrine of Inspiration.  Well, let us look at it from Luke’s perspective.  Luke was not one of the original disciples of Jesus, just as he implied in his prologue (Luke 1.1-4).  Consequently, being a disciplined investigative reporter he prepared materials for his future Gospel by interviewing those who were closest to Jesus (Luke was a contemporary of the first generation of Jesus’ followers; thus, he personally knew many of the apostles).  Consequently, we should ask ourselves this simply question: once Luke discovered that a biography about Jesus had already been composed based upon the eyewitness testimony and memories of the apostle Peter (i.e., the Gospel of Mark), would it be inappropriate for the Holy Spirit to inspire Luke to include some of Mark’s material into his own Gospel?  Or do we expect Luke to sit quietly in meditation waiting for the Holy Spirit to inspire him to write specific words in a specific way, only later to discover that in many places what he wrote corresponds precisely with what was already recorded by Gospel authors?  Luke has already confessed that he was dependent upon oral reports from Jesus followers and the apostles, why should he be any less credible if he also depended upon other literary works based these same eyewitness testimonies? I personally do not see Luke’s dependence upon other trustworthy Gospels as a threat to the doctrine of Inspiration, especially when one realizes that such practices were common fare for ancient historians that composed works on empires or biographies about famous people.  While holding to the position of “Literary Independence” may make the Synoptic Gospels more “magical” for some, it does not mandate that those who affirm “Literary Interdependence” with respect to the Synoptic Gospels have some how impugned the doctrine of Inspiration. Moreover, audiences in Luke’s day would have expected Luke to embed other trustworthy literary sources in his biography on the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as include additional material that he had personally gathered from other trustworthy eyewitnesses.

So, could the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain common “oral traditions”?  By the term “oral traditions” many scholars are referring to supposedly “anonymous” but well-known stories about the things Jesus said and did.  It is possible but extremely unlikely given what Luke asserted in his prologue, which was that he wanted to provide Theophilus with certitude about what he had learned concerning Jesus from others (Luke 1.3-4).  By definition one cannot provide certainty about anything that is dependent upon anonymous hearsay sources.  Moreover, this is clearly not the case with Mark’s Gospel.  The church’s earliest histories objectively document that Mark relied upon the memories and sermons of his mentor—the apostle Peter; thus, Mark’s primary source was anything but anonymous (cf., Papias, ca. AD 110).  And it is especially certain, again as Luke claimed in his prologue, that any oral tradition that was used for material within his Gospel only came from trustworthy sources.  There is no hard evidence that any of the Gospel writers relied upon hearsay or anonymous sources.  A comparison of the Synoptic Gospels, therefore, provides conclusive evidence that there is to a large degree literary interdependence between them.  Which Gospel was the first or oldest, and therefore the main source for the other 2 Synoptic Gospels is the question that Source Criticism seeks to address and answer.  Consequently, since we know that the authors of the canonical Gospels, as well as their sources, were entirely trustworthy, then we should not feel that the doctrine of Inspiration is in any way threatened by any evidence of literary interdependence.  On the contrary, since we know these sources to be profoundly trustworthy, then we should have the utmost confidence that the data contained in all four of the canonical Gospels is also accurate and trustworthy.  Neither should we unnecessarily assume that the doctrine of Inspiration is threatened because one canonical Gospel has a literary relationship (i.e., containing the same material) to other similarly inspired Gospels.

Doc.

© Monte Shanks Copyright 2014

 

 

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