Acts : an exegetical commentary. Volume 1 Introduction and 1:1-2:47

1082 Pages·2012·10.675 MB·English

by  Keener, Craig S.

Acts

An ExEgEticAl
commEntAry
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 1 5/22/12 2:50 PM
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 2 5/22/12 2:50 PM
Acts
An Exegetical
commentary
volume 1
IntroductIon  
and 1:1—2:47
crAig s. KEEnEr
K
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 3 5/22/12 2:50 PM
© 2012 by Craig S. Keener
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy,
recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception
is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keener, Craig S., 1960–
Acts : an exegetical commentary / Craig S. Keener.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8010-4836-4 (cloth)
1. Bible. N.T. Acts—Commentaries. I. Title.
BS2625.53.K446 2012
266.6077—dc22 2011048744
Unless noted otherwise, all translations of Scripture are those of the author.
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate
at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group
does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 4 5/22/12 2:50 PM
To Dr. Médine Moussounga Keener,
French and history professor,
researcher in A frican
and African-American women’s history,
and mentor to her students;
former refugee in the Congo;
my friend of many years;
my colleague;
and my beloved wife
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 5 5/22/12 2:50 PM
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 6 5/22/12 2:50 PM
contents
Acknowledgments xv
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction
Prolegomenon: Initial Considerations for 1. Writing and Publishing Acts 43
Reading This Commentary 3 1. Writing Large Narrative Works
1. The Focus of This Commentary a. Length
b. Drafting the Work
2. Academic and Social-Historical Emphasis
2. Publishing Acts
3. Limitations of This Work
a. Released in Stages
a. A Broad Sweep
b. Pliny’s Example
b. Text Criticism
Conclusion
c. Social History and Social Science
d. Modern Secondary Literature 2. Proposed Genres for Acts 51
e. Early Reception History 1. The Importance of Genre
4. The Legitimacy of Social-Historical Inquiry 2. Travel Narrative
a. The Connection between Historical and 3. Biography
Literary Questions a. Nature of Ancient Biography
b. Problems with Biography as the Primary
b. Ancient Approaches
Genre for Acts
c. The Value of the Ancient Contexts
c. The Same Genre for Both Volumes?
d. Other Purposes for Historical Inquiry
4. Novel
e. This Commentary’s Sociorhetorical Approach
a. Literary Comparisons
5. Questions of Historical Reliability b. Limitations of Such Comparisons
a. The Value of These Questions c. Similar Literary Features in Histories
b. Historical Probabilities d. Perspectives and Biases in Historiography
c. Common Ground for Historiography e. Historiography, Inference, and Mistakes?
6. The Question of Sources f. More Serious Flaws in the Comparison of
a. Early Jewish Sources Acts to Novels
b. Greco-Roman Sources and Archaeology g. Value and Weaknesses of This Approach
c. Modern Sources h. Closing Comments on Novels
5. Epics
7. This Commentary’s Genre
6. Acts
a. Fresh Research
Conclusion
b. Utility for Christian Believers
c. Further Research 3. Acts as a Work of Ancient
8. Nomenclature Historiography 90
a. Religious Labels 1. The Historical-Monograph Thesis
b. Geographic Labels a. The Value of This Proposal
Conclusion b. Boundaries between Novel and History?
vii
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 7 5/22/12 2:50 PM
Contents
c. Modern versus Ancient Historiography 7. Acts and Paul 221
d. Ancient History as Nonhistory? 1. Luke’s Perspective on Paul
2. What Kind of History? a. Apologetic for Paul
a. Types of History b. Pauline Material in Acts
b. Overlap with Biographic Approaches c. No Physical Description of Paul
c. Acts’ Type of History 2. Scholarly Views
Conclusion 3. What Not to Expect in Comparisons
a. Incomplete Information
4. The Character of Ancient
b. Different Perspectives
Historiography 116 c. Different Emphases
1. Concerns for Historical Information 4. Why Not to Privilege Paul against Luke
a. Historians’ Concern for Accuracy? a. Comparing Other Histories and Letters
b. Historians and Critical Thinking b. Limitations of Paul’s Letters
c. Polybius’s High Ideal Standard 5. Could Luke Have Known Paul’s Letters?
d. Earlier versus Later Sources 6. Correspondences between Luke and Paul
2. Concerns for Rhetorical Presentation a. Earlier Lists of Correspondences
a. Historians and Rhetoric b. Pauline Correlations with Acts
b. Luke’s History and Rhetoric i. Paul’s Early Years and Companions
ii. Paul’s “Missionary Journeys”
c. Expanding and Abridging Accounts
iii. Paul’s Collection and Roman Custody
Conclusion
7. Paul’s Theology in Acts
5. Historical Perspectives, Tendenz, and a. Critiquing Vielhauer’s Critique
Purpose 148 b. Other Alleged Incompatibilities
Conclusion
1. History and Agendas
a. Political and National Agendas 8. Speeches in Acts 258
b. Moral Agendas in Other Genres 1. Luke’s Speech Material
c. Historians’ Moral Agendas a. Elite Rhetoric versus Acts’ Speeches
d. The Value of Moral Examples b. Quantity of Speech Material
e. The Role of Praise and Blame c. Kinds of Speeches
f. Historians’ “Theology” d. Purpose and Function of Speeches
2. Is Luke’s Tendenz Compatible with “True” e. Some Compositional Issues
History? i. Settings of Speeches
3. Apologetic Historiography ii. Speeches and Narrative Devices
Conclusion iii. Unusual Aspects of Luke’s Speeches
2. “Authenticity” of the Speeches
6. Approaching Acts as a Historical
a. Historians Creating Speeches
Source 166 i. Divergent Reports of Speeches in
1. Evaluating Degrees of Historical Reliability Antiquity
2. Luke’s Use of Sources ii. Pseudepigraphic Speech Composition in
a. Other Historians’ Use of Sources Other Genres
b. Luke’s Prologue in the Quest for Sources iii. Historians Composed Speeches
c. Luke’s Use of Sources iv. The Ideal of Capturing the Gist
d. Sources in Acts v. Criticisms of Inappropriate Creativity
vi. The Actual Practice of Livy
e. Investigation and Thorough Knowledge (Luke
vii. The Question of Acts
1:3)
b. Prosopopoeia
f. Comparison with Josephus
c. Preserved Speeches
g. Chronology?
i. Speakers’ Notes and Manuscripts
h. Omissions
ii. Note-Taking by Hearers
3. Luke-Acts as a Historical Source
(1) Academic Note-Taking
a. Plausibility Structures
(2) Note-Taking on Speeches
b. Scholarly Views
(3) Other Personal Notes
c. Evaluating Luke’s Usefulness as an Ancient
iii. The Potential for Oral Memory
Historical Writer (1) Oral Cultures?
4. Examples Where Acts’ Accounts Are Historically (2) Academic Memory
Probable (3) Sayings Traditions
a. Accurate Local Color (4) Oratorical Memory
b. The Jerusalem Church (5) Ancient Mnemonics in Other Settings
c. The Pauline Mission iv. Relevance for Acts?
d. Paul in Roman Custody d. Expanding Speeches
e. Perspectives e. Comparing Hellenistic Jewish Speeches
Conclusions regarding Luke’s Historiography f. Comparing Josephus
viii
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 8 5/22/12 2:50 PM
Contents
i. Skepticism about Josephus’s Approach d. Premodern and Earlier Modern Miracle
ii. Composing Speech without Witnesses Reports
iii. Josephus Not the Standard e. Modern Western Perspectives
3. Unity among the Speeches? i. Supernaturalist Christian Claims in the
a. Unity and the Authenticity Question Twentieth-Century West
b. Literary Unity of Speeches ii. Supernaturalist Christian Claims in Recent
i. Reasons for Similarities? Decades
ii. Value of Repetition f. Proposed Explanations
c. Unity versus Historical Tradition? i. Natural Explanations
i. Stylistic Unity and Authenticity? ii. Suprahuman Explanations?
ii. Stylistic Unity in Other Historians 5. Approaching Luke’s Miracle Claims
d. The Speeches: Accurate or Invented?
10. Date 383
e. Historical Tradition in the Speeches?
1. In the 60s
i. Semitisms and “Primitive” Christology
a. Argument from Acts’ Ending
ii. Need for a Balanced Appraisal
b. Other Arguments for a Pre-70 Date
iii. Petrinisms, Paulinisms
c. After Paul, before 70
iv. Weighing Criteria
2. After 70
f. Conclusions regarding Historical Tradition
a. Based on Mark and Luke 21
9. Signs and Historiography 320 b. Acts before Luke?
c. Majority Range
1. The Problem
d. Soon after 70
2. Some Introductory Questions
3. After 90
a. Evidence for Jesus’s Miracles
4. Second Century
b. Methodological Questions
5. The Date of Acts
3. Ancient Miracle Accounts outside Early
Christianity 11. The Author of Luke-Acts 402
a. Gentile Greco-Roman Miracle Accounts
1. Questions about Authorship
i. Healing Sanctuaries
2. The Author’s Probable Background
ii. Pagan Miracle Workers a. Jewish or Gentile Christian?
(1) Magical Associations b. After Jerusalem
(2) The “Divine Man” 3. The Likeliest Author
(3) Philostratus’s Claims about Apollonius a. A Companion of Paul
(4) Jewish “Divine Men”? b. Luke the Physician as the Author?
b. Early Jewish Miracle Workers i. Patristic Evidence
c. Comparison of Early Christian and Pagan ii. Companions in Pauline Literature
Miracle Accounts c. Physicians and Luke
d. Comparison of Early Christian and Jewish
Miracle Accounts Excursus: Ancient Physicians 416
e. Parallels and the Authenticity Question
1. Physicians and Their Limitations
4. Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity
a. Medicine and Superstition
Criterion?
b. Sounder Medicine
a. Ancient Skepticism toward Miracles 2. Physicians’ Status and Background
i. Polybius’s Critique of Sensationalist 3. Paganism, Judaism, and Physicians
Historians
ii. Signs in Critical Historians 12. Luke’s Audience 423
iii. Ancient Plausibility Structures
1. Of High Status and Educated?
b. Modern Skepticism toward Supernatural
a. Theophilus and Marks of Status
Phenomena
b. Limitations of Such Inferences
i. Our Cultural Limitations
c. Status and Surmounting Status
ii. Should We Privilege Our Worldview?
d. Likely Status of Audience
iii. Modern Objections Considered
2. Jewish, Gentile, or God-Fearing?
(1) Some Historic Philosophic Obstacles
3. Geographical Range of Audience
(2) The Shift in the Western Worldview
a. Rome?
c. Majority World versus Modernist Western
b. Corinth or Ephesus
Assumptions c. Philippi
i. Many Miracle Claims Today d. Ancient Writers’ Geographic Assumptions
(1) A Multicultural Approach e. Luke’s Geographic Assumptions
(2) Collecting Reports Conclusion
ii. Majority World Voices
(1) Learning from Other Cultures 13. The Purpose of Acts 435
(2) Majority World Claims Widespread 1. Some Proposed Purposes for Acts
(3) Examples in the Majority World 2. Salvation History and Mission
ix
_Keener_Acts_book.indb 9 5/22/12 2:50 PM