By Joseph B. Tyson
Professor emeritus of Religious Studies
Southern Methodist University
April 2011
The range of proposed dates for Acts is quite wide, from c. 60 CE-150 CE. Within this range of dates, three are prominent in the scholarly literature: an early, an intermediate, and a late date.
Some scholars prefer an early date, i.e., the early 60's of the first century. It is believed that Paul's arrival in Rome, described in Acts 28, must have occurred between 58-60 CE. But the author of Acts, who wrote that Paul went to Rome to be tried before the emperor, provided us with no description of the trial or its outcome. Why so? Perhaps because the book was written before the trial took place. Scholars who favor this argument may draw on the fact that the author of Acts included ample and detailed descriptions of Paul's earlier trials, and they observe that he would have done the same with the Roman trial if that had been possible. In addition, the so-called "we-sections" (those places where the first person plural pronoun is used) imply that the author of Acts was present with Paul on a number of important occasions. Scholars who favor this early date have no difficulty in identifying the author as "Luke," said to be a companion of Paul in Col 4:14; 2 Tim 4:11; Phlm 1:24.
The significance of an early date for Acts lies in the apparent advantage it gives to the historian of this period. If the author was a companion of Paul, who accompanied him on some of his travels, then those sections of Acts that deal with Paul may be regarded as eye-witness reports about him and his life. This does not, of course, carry over to the early chapters of Acts, where Paul is not present, but at least for chapters 13-28 we may be confident that we have a first-hand report. An early date for Acts has been favored by many conservative and evangelical Christians, who emphasize the eye-witness character of its contents and, on that basis, assume the historical reliability of the book as a whole.
Most modern scholars who write about Acts favor an intermediate date, i.e., c. 80-c. 90 CE, and they cite a number of factors to support this dating. The destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by Roman armies in 70 CE is not mentioned in Acts but is probably alluded to in Luke 21:20-24. But Acts could not have been written before c. 90 CE, since the author seems to be ignorant about Paul's letters, which were not collected and circulated before that date.[1]
Several implications follow from dating Acts in this intermediate period. It becomes unlikely that Acts provides us with an eye-witness account of the life of Paul. The author is a generation removed from the time of those persons he writes about and, although he devotes sig-nificant attention to Paul, he fails to mention important things about him. For example, Paul's letters reveal that he claimed to be an apostle and that this status was vital to him. But in Acts 1:21-22 the criteria for being an apostle definitively exclude Paul from membership in this group. Further, Acts 1:13 has a list of eleven apostles, to which number Matthias is added to replace Ju-das (Acts 1:26). Acts makes it clear that the number of apostles cannot be more or less than twelve and that Paul is not included among them. It would be highly unlikely for an author who was also a companion of Paul to go to such lengths to exclude Paul from an office that he so vig-orously claimed for himself.[2]
A growing number of scholars prefer a late date for the composition of Acts, i.e., c. 110-120 CE.[3] Three factors support such a date. First, Acts seems to be unknown before the last half of the second century. Second, compelling arguments can be made that the author of Acts was acquainted with some materials written by Josephus, who completed his Antiquities of the Jews in 93-94 CE. If the author of Acts knew of some pieces from this document, he could not have written his book before that date. Third, recent studies have revised the judgment that the author of Acts was unaware of the Pauline letters. Convincing arguments have been made especially in the case of Galatians by scholars who are convinced that the author of Acts not only knew this Pauline letter but regarded it as a problem and wrote to subvert it.[4] They especially call attention to the verbal and ideational similarities between Acts 15 and Galatians 2 and show how the dif-ferences may be intended to create a distance between Paul and some of his later interpreters and critics.
Late daters of Acts agree with intermediate daters in questioning its historical value. But the chief significance of a late date for Acts takes us far beyond claims and denials of historical reliability. Its significance relates to the probable context of Acts' composition.
Proponents of an early date sometimes point out that the early 60's of the first century was a time when the Jesus movement was going into its second generation. Believers at that time may have needed some reminder of the early days, a story that would remind them of the roots of the movement and its early heroes. In defense of an intermediate date, it may be observed that the period 80-90 CE was a time when the Jesus movement had spread both geographically and ethnically. After the fall of Jerusalem, Christians may have been in need of some narrative that would explain how this movement, which claimed to be the fulfillment of Jewish expectations and prophetic scriptures, came to be a Gentile movement but was almost totally rejected by Jews.
Although these suggestions are plausible, the virtue of a late date for the composition of Acts lies in its ability to cite a known and datable historical situation which would provide a meaningful context to which Acts responds. In the first half of the second century, important Christian concepts were still in the process of being formulated. A major contributor to this proc-ess was Marcion of Sinope.
Marcion was one of the best known Christian leaders in the early church, and, in my judgment, Acts was written as, at least in part, a response to the challenge he presented.[5] It an-swers the Marcionite contentions point by point. Marcion stressed the distance between Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures, but the author of Acts repeatedly showed that Paul and all the other Christian preachers maintained that Jesus fulfilled the predictions of the Hebrew prophets. Mar-cion claimed that Paul was the only apostle, but Acts portrays him as at one with Peter and the others, even subservient to them on some occasions, and it even defines apostleship in a way that excludes Paul. Marcion called Peter and the others "false apostles," in contrast to Paul, but Acts not only characterizes them as in total agreement with Paul but even goes so far as to attribute to Peter the first conversion of a Gentile (Acts 10:1-11:18). Marcion maintained that Paul pro-claimed a God of grace, who released humankind from the domination of the God of Torah, but the author of Acts characterized Paul as a Torah-observant Jew and a devout Pharisee. Marcion taught that Jesus brought Torah to an end, but Acts showed that the apostles and Paul agreed that some things from Torah were still to be required even of Gentile believers (see Acts 15:20).
Conceiving Acts as an anti-Marcionite text enables us to appreciate the contribution of its author. This author is not merely telling the story of the rise of Christianity, nor is he simply at-tempting to address the problem of Jewish rejection of the Gospel. He is defining the Christian movement in direct opposition to the Marcionites. For the author of Acts, belief in Jesus is in full conformity with the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures; Torah is not totally dispensed with; Jew-ish traditions are not absolutely jettisoned.
A great deal rides on decisions about the date of Acts, which unfortunately cannot be de-termined with certainty. But judgments about the probable time of its composition inevitably af-fect the ways we read the book. If we think it was an early eye-witness account, it may be read as a basically reliable story of the first Christian generation. If we think it was written toward the end of the first century, we might read it with an effort to assess the author's understanding of Christianity as a Gentile movement with Jewish roots but without Jewish believers. If we think it was a second-century text, we might regard it as an effort to counteract historical and theological teachings that challenged what the author believed to be basic to the Christian movement. This way of reading Acts would show that its author played a central role in the very process of defin-ing Christianity.[6]
Notes
[1] The contention of Edgar J. Goodspeed, that Paul's letters were collected and distributed about this time has rarely been questioned. See Goodspeed, An Introduction to the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937).
[2] Paul and Barnabas are called apostles in Acts 4:4, 14, but most scholars either ascribe these verses to the use of a source by the author of Acts or maintain that it does not compromise the earlier exclusion of Paul from the rank of apostles.
[3] The most comprehensive recent proposal for a late date of Acts is that of Richard I. Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 2006).
[4] See Pervo, Dating Acts; Heikki Leppä, "Luke's Critical Use of Galatians" (Ph. D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2002); William O. Walker, Jr., "Acts and the Pauline Corpus Reconsidered." JSNT 24 (1985): 3-23; Walker, "Acts and the Pauline Corpus Revisited: Peter's Speech at the Jerusalem Conference," in Literary Studies in Luke-Acts: Essays in Honor of Joseph B. Tyson (ed. Richard P. Thompson and Thomas E. Phillips; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998), 77-86.
[5] This claim was first made by John Knox in his Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early History of the Canon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).
[6] I followed John Knox in pursuing this contention in my Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).
Comments (14)
Most insightful overview Joseph. I try to get my students to see the broader issue you focus on here, not whether one is "liberal" or "conservative" but what historical context best fits the situation that the author of Luke-Acts appears to address. Do you know Art Droge's article on the subject? I can send you a copy/link.
#1 - James D. Tabor - 06/09/2014 - 16:54
Except as an academic exercise, all these are meaningless from the point of view of FAITH - I define as believing in something, right or wrong, true or false.
#2 - Isalcordo - 06/24/2014 - 04:59
I have always felt that Paul was defining himself as an Apostle in a separate and distinct sense from the Twelve.
It remains a mystery to me as to why there is only the briefest of an allusion to his conversion experience in one of his letters as compared to the detailed story given in Acts. Chapter nine.
#3 - William Johns - 07/15/2014 - 20:41
To base on my own findings, the Apostle Paul happens to be the author of the book of Acts.
#4 - ukaegbu collins maduakolam - 05/29/2015 - 16:22
One thing that I find interesting about Acts is that numerous implications are relatively clear about it, which no Christian ever mentions or even tries to deal with. The quotation of Psalm 2 as being about Jesus clashes with what seems most obvious, that the author of Psalm 2 was not writing about Jesus but about himself, and that this is not inconsistent with the way King David wrote. But the really glaring fact about Psalm 2 is that in it the God of the Hebrews promises to give its author the very sorts of things which Satan offered Jesus when he was on the mountaintop. The obvious difference is that whereas the author of Psalm 2, and apparently his readers, held such things to be unambiguous treasures, Jesus and his followers characteristically believe they are temptations and evil. I think this marks one of the differences between the Old Testament and the New, that some ideas and values are reversed, and that the Christian ones can be seen with a little thought as being not as good as the old ones. Of course Jesus strongly discouraged Christians asking questions, promising that if they did they would spend eternity in hell, and this is certainly consistent with what I've seen in Christian practice, that no one actually questions any Christian dogma seriously or even carefully. Anyway, I thought this might be of interest to you, and I expect that you have an easy answer to it. Another thing about Psalm 2 is that the Hebrew God calls its author his son and says that it happened on a particular day; whereas, Jesus was supposedly that god's son from before the beginning of time, and, because of this, the psalm cannot have been about Jesus. If these ideas are correct, the conclusion must be that the author of Acts was misinterpreting Psalm 2, which would by no means be outside of Christian habits, provided it might produce an increase in the number of believers or strengthen the belief of those already belonging. And if this is true it must mean that one of the characteristics of Christians is that they selectively ignore truth in preference to faith. I've seen this so many times in churches that I'm surprised no one ever says anything about it. To me it is clearly one of the most profound and obvious flaws of that religion. I would appreciate any comments you would care to make.
#5 - Robert Burt - 06/14/2015 - 18:07
Has anyone followed the logic of timing of the we/us inserts to consider Timothy or Silas as the author?
#6 - Oscar Carroll - 07/08/2015 - 00:12
it is apparent that the author of acts was highly gentile biased, an idea he used to demonstrate what he calls God's plan for the salvation of all humanity. His emphasis on the shift of viewing Israel as the elect of God and placing the gentle church as new Israel is highly fascinating
#7 - paul kadyamusuna - 07/29/2015 - 08:42
who then is the author of acts?
#8 - jervas mpambwa - 04/20/2016 - 13:26
Comment #1: Isn't there a typo in the text? Shouldn't the following sentence read "after" instead of "before"?
"But Acts could not have been written before c. 90 CE, since the author seems to be ignorant about Paul's letters, which were not collected and circulated before that date."
Comment 2: The prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem is also in Matt. 24 and in Mark 13. This provides only weak evidence for a post-70 AD dating of Luke (and hence also of Acts - same author) because it would not be surprising (even apart from divine revelation) for a Jew at the time of Christ to predict that the mounting tensions between Jews and Romans would eventually result in the Romans marching on and destroying Jerusalem. The prediction "not one stone will be left on another: every one of them will be thrown down"(Lk 21:6) is not literally fulfilled; and this is easier to understand as as pre-event hyperbole than as as an after the fact hyperbole. Some stones do remain together (the Wailing Wall).
Comment 3: The shift from the pronoun "they" to "we"is suggestive of the author joining the company at that point in the narrative.
Comment 4: If the story of Acts were largely made up by a someone writing in the "moderate date period" it would be easily refuted by people still alive in the churches that Paul is said to have started.
Comment 5: That Acts ends with Paul awaiting trial in Rome (and with no resolution being mentioned) would be a strange way to end a largely made up story, but makes sense if the author dies before the trial is resolved.
Comment 6: Regarding the claim that the author of Acts relies upon Josephus see the Wikipedia article "The Historical Reliability of the Acts of the Apostles"
Comment 7: What Marcion taught was not only contrary to what was taught in Acts but was contrary to what was taught in the rest of the New Testament documents. For instance, the four gospels make a major point of Jesus being the fulfillment of Jewish messianic hopes and of many passages in the Hebrew Bible.
#9 - Peter E. Payne - 05/12/2016 - 00:18
I agree that the prediction that the Romans would destroy the temple is a weak argument for dating any writing in the New Testament. It is not only weak, but foolish. Given the political climate of the times, it was a rather easy and rational prediction to make. The temple being destroyed was not exactly a novel experience in Judah. History shows other accurate predictions and a relatively recent one should suffice. French General Marshall Foch (I believe) when he saw the Versailles Treaty in 1919 said it was not a peace treaty, it was a 20 year armistice. Unlike Jesus who did not predict the precise date, the French Marshall was able to do so. I think the advocates of late dating ought to get rid of this one because it is non-sense. We all have probably made predictions that come true because they are so likely to come true.
#10 - Fred Schroeder - 01/23/2017 - 20:32
Thank you for an interesting article presenting several perspectives. I fished reading Acts this morning and was expecting a quick and easy answer as to who wrote it, but this was much more curiosity provoking and realistic! I just wanted to encourager commenter 5, Robert Burt, to please look for a church community which is both rooted in the faith, and welcomes questions and rigorous discussion. The Christian faith, in my opinion, should not preclude questioning and a desire to seek the truth. We are told to love the Lord our God with all our mind, as well as our soul and strength. We are told to seek, that we may find; and that we cannot fully understand God's ways for they are higher than ours. Search, pray, seek, wrestle - and find someone who is wise, faithful and steady to accompany you on that journey. A church which does not allow you to ask questions may not be the healthiest place for you to grow. If God is who He says He is, then His reality is not contingent upon your beliefs about Him - I would not presume He would shrink back from genuine questions. Don't take my word as gospel, I have no credentials other than as a Believer who wrestled with doubts and questions alongside faith, but I wanted to encourage you and let you know that not all Christians or churches disapprove of questions or shy away from tough issues. Grace and peace be with you, brother, as you work things out. Don't forget to ask God for wisdom and understanding and faith, as - I believe - these things are given by God and not conjured up by our own striving.
#11 - Christine Bartram - 04/07/2017 - 10:42
The Lord Jesus appointed 12 apostles. Paul is the 12th and Matthias is not. A judicious reading of the 11's vain attempt to appoint an office that was not in their power was in vain, notwithstanding that they presumed to have performed Jesus' will in their still carnal minds via defunct instruments.
#12 - Darren Clarke - 08/08/2017 - 22:58
Comment
Luke 21, Matt. 24 and Mark 13. Could be seen in conjunction with John 4, The samaritian woman.
Here the theological point appears to be that worship is moved from a physical place, the temple, to the individual worshipper - or "From bricks to hearts".
Keeping in that line of thought. Jesus' words in e.g. Luke 21 might make sense as the same point reiterated, figuratively or spiritually speaking as "when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down". E.g. The physical destruction of the temple simply means that the temple - or any other place - is no longer the focus of worship.
That the romans by chance or as result of divine foresight - actually destroys the physical temple in a later point in time, might not be the point of Luke 21. After all it appears strange that a building should occupy such an important place in the mind of a God that wrote/writes his law, not on stone, but on the hearts of men.
#13 - Henrik_Krogh - 01/02/2018 - 14:18
There is of course another very striking bit of anti-Marcionite polemic if one accepts a late date – the opening words Τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον ἐποιησάμην περὶ πάντων, ὦ Θεόφιλε could well be a magnificent lie in that context, clearly claiming to be the second volume of Luke/Marcion's Gospel. These words are usually taken at face-value, but I think they make better sense as the most brazen pseudepigraphy, consistent with the whole "we" business.
#14 - James Dowden - 01/14/2018 - 16:34