The Date of Acts' Composition

[James Hannam]

If I recall rightly, the Acts of the Apostles ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome. This means the narrative ends with the situation where it stands in about 64AD or so.

This has always struck me as quite strong evidence that Luke was writing in or very shortly after 64AD, but this view has never been very popular with the academic community.

Given my amateur ramblings inspired such an interesting discussion on John, might I ask what the positive reasons are for not dating Acts to 64AD. Is it simply that it makes a mess of Markan priority (always assuming we must date Mark to after 70AD)? Or are there good internal reasons for a later date.

Best wishes

James

[hawkinthesnow]

Hello James. I think it can be agreed on all sides that Acts was written after Luke. Luke 1:1,2 suggest that Luke was a second generation Christian who had "followed all things closely" - tha is the traditions that had been handed down by those who " from the beginning were eyewitnesses". This seems to suggest that the gospel of Luke was written towards the latter end of the 1st century.

Acts 20:18 - 35 records a speech by Paul to the elders at Ephesus that seems to suggest that his demise was imminent (verse25). Following the common methodology of the time, Luke's speeches were not the actual speeches made, but would have been a basic record of what was said, but in his own words. This speech of Paul's does seem to suggest that Luke was writing after Paul had died.

As to the end of Acts - Luke says that Paul lived in Rome for two whole years at his own expense, preaching and teaching. That seems to suggest a specific time period between Paul's imprisonment and ..what? Assumiong that Acts was written after Paul and most of the the other apostles had died, it would seem that Luke finishes with the theme he began, which is the preaching of the gospel. His readers will have known what happened to Paul. But Paul was not really important in terms of the theme of the book of Acts. It was not really about him. The whole purpose of Acts is to show how the message of Jesus spread outwards from Jerusalem, and it is a fitting end that Acts should end with the gospel being preached in Rome which was the capital of the empire.

So for that reason I don't think that the ending of Acts really provides strong evidence for an earlier dating than most scholars have given it.

[Anonymous]

I'm with hawkinthesnow on this one; the ending of Acts ca. 62-64 only gives us a terminus post quem for the ending of Acts. The terminus ante quem for it is the first unambiguous allusion to it in later literature (which I don't know off the top of my head).

I agree with hawk that Acts 20 probably alludes to Paul's death; I would add that the dramatic buildup to Paul's journey to Rome suggests that he, the focal character of most of Acts up until then (he was God's chosen instrument to bring his logos to ta ethne, as God told Ananias in Acts 9) didn't do much more to spread God's message after that.

Another argument for Acts' distance in composition from its ending: "Luke's" works show dramatic theological discrepancies from Paul's letters; the systematic erasure (documented by Ehrman and others) of any reference to Christ's atonement, a central Pauline doctrine comes to mind. Yet Acts' "we" passages (so I am convinced by Lane Fox and others) are best explained by the authorship of a travel companion of Paul. Why so many differences compared Pauline theology in a work by a longtime companion? (Chs. 21-28, all we-passages, happened over several years!) I suggest years (decades?) of independent critical reflection on the meaning of Jesus' ministry and the spread of the Christian community.

I agree that the point of Acts was to bring the gospel "up to the end of the world" (Jesus' last words, Acts 1.8). The ending with Paul still alive and preaching just means that the work has reached its thematically-founded conclusion. Its ending point does not imply that Paul was still alive as "Luke" composed Acts any more than the Iliad's ending before Achilles' death implies that Achilles still lived. (Forgive me for using another comparison to an ancient literary work, which the author of Acts shows no evidence of having known.) But just as the Iliad is about Achilles' rage, and so ends before Achilles dies or Troy falls, so Acts ends at its programmed end.