When were the Acts of the Apostles written?
Acts of the Apostles (genre)
All other books with similar titles or narratives have not been included into the Bible, and belong to the New Testament apocrypha. These acts narratives tend to be later, legendary accounts about the early apostles written in the 2nd and 3rd century CE. The books normally do not claim to be written by apostles, but are anonymous, and thus they are not considered pseudepigrapha and forgeries. Unlike the canonical Book of Acts, they tend to focus on the exploits of individual apostles.
Acts 13
Acts 13 is the thirteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Pisidia. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Apostolic Fathers
The Apostolic Fathers were Christian theologians who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, who are believed to have personally known some of the Twelve Apostles, or to have been significantly influenced by them. Their writings, though popular in Early Christianity, were ultimately not included in the canon of the New Testament once it reached its final form. Many of the writings derive from the same time period and geographical location as other works of early Christian literature that did come to be part of the New Testament, and some of the writings found among the Apostolic Fathers' seem to have been just as highly regarded as some of the writings that became the New Testament.
Paul the Apostle
The author of Acts of the Apostles may have learned of Paul's conversion from the church in Jerusalem, or from the church in Antioch, or possibly from Paul himself.
Acts 13
The first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas took place about AD 47-48.This Lucius of Cyrene is thought to be the same person as mentioned in , or the same as Luke, the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
Acts of Timothy
The Latin version attributes the Acts to Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 130–196); however, the Greek original has no such attestation, thus indicating that such an ascription of authorship was a later addition. Usener dated the Acts before 356, probably between 320 and 340, and thought they were based on a veritable history of the Ephesian church. Shortly after its publication Theodor Zahn raised several issues concerning Usener's dating. One problem was the statement in the Acts that Lystra was in the province (eparchy) of Lycaonia. Zahn pointed out that Lycaonia was not a separate province until after c. 370. Accordingly, most scholars put the time of composition no earlier than the fifth century. Another more recently observed problem is the two named proconsuls of Asia, Maximus and Peregrinus. Barnes has demonstrated that both these individuals are fictitious. Thus, the trustworthiness of the Acts as a source for historical information is somewhat impaired. Nevertheless, the author does display local knowledge of the topography and culture of Ephesus.
Lives of the Prophets
The Lives of the Prophets is an ancient apocryphal account of the lives of the prophets from the Old Testament. It is not regarded as scripture by any Jewish or Christian denomination. The work may have been known by the author of some of the Pauline Epistles, as there are similarities in the descriptions of the fates of the prophets, although without naming the individuals concerned.
Acts of Peter and Paul
The work appears to have been based on the Acts of Peter, with the addition of Paul's presence where before it was only Peter's. The work is dated to around 450 to 550. Latin as well as and Greek versions survive, with the latter usually being longer. The Latin versions sometimes end with "I, Marcellus, have written what I saw." This Marcellus is identified as a disciple of Simon Magus, who lived in the 1st century. Because of this obvious anachronism, since the text is clearly written centuries later, scholars have dubbed him Pseudo-Marcellus.
The Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles
The text made its first appearance in London in 1871. According to the editor, it was translated in the late 18th century by the French naturalist Sonnini de Manoncourt from a "Greek manuscript discovered in the archives at Constantinople and presented to him by the Sultan Abdoul Achmet". It was found hidden in an English translation of Sonnini's "Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie" in the library of Sir John Newport, MP (1756-1843) after the MP's death. However, no trace of any such manuscript has been found, and from internal evidence, mainstream philology considers it to most likely be a fraud, thus it is classed among the modern pseudepigrapha.
Apostles' Creed
The title "Symbolum Apostolicum" (Symbol or Creed of the Apostles) appears for the first time in a letter, probably written by Ambrose, from a Council in Milan to Pope Siricius in about AD 390 "Let them give credit to the Creed of the Apostles, which the Roman Church has always kept and preserved undefiled". But what existed at that time was not what is now known as the Apostles' Creed but a shorter statement of belief that, for instance, did not include the phrase "maker of heaven and earth", a phrase that may have been inserted only in the 7th century.
The account of the origin of this creed, the forerunner and principal source of the Apostles' Creed, as having been jointly created by the Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with each of the twelve contributing one of the articles, was already current at that time.
Acts 8
Acts 8 is the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the burial of Stephen, the beginnings of Christian persecution, and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Samaria and Ethiopia. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
The writer of Acts introduced Saul, later the Apostle Paul, as an active witness of Stephen's death in , and confirmed his approval in . Reuben Torrey, in his "Treasury of Scripture Knowledge", wrote "This clause [i.e. verse 8:1] evidently belongs to the conclusion of the previous chapter; there is scarcely a worse division of chapters than this".
Acts of the Apostles
The title "Acts of the Apostles" (Greek "Praxeis Apostolon") was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was an existing title or one invented by Irenaeus; it does seem clear, however, that it was not given by the author.
Arator
Arator was a sixth-century Christian poet from Liguria in northwestern Italy. His best known work, "De Actibus Apostolorum", is a verse history of the Apostles.
Acts 28
Acts 28 is the twenty-eighth (and also the last) chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the journey of Paul from Malta to Italy until finally settled in Rome. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Canons of the Apostles
Most modern critics agree that they could not have been composed before the Council of Antioch of 341, some twenty of whose canons they quote; nor even before the latter end of the 4th century, since they are certainly posterior to the Apostolic Constitutions. Franz Xaver von Funk, admittedly a foremost authority on the latter and all similar early canonical texts, locates the composition of the Apostolic Canons in the 5th century, near the year 400. Thereby he approaches the opinion of his scholarly predecessor, Johann Sebastian Drey, the first among modern writers to study profoundly these ancient canons; he distinguished two editions of them, a shorter one (fifty) about the middle of the 5th century, and a longer one (eighty-five) early in the 6th century. Von Funk admits but one edition. They were certainly current in the Eastern Church in the first quarter of the 6th century, for about 520 Severus of Antioch quotes canons 21-23.
Culture of Israel
The Jewish-Christian movement was formed in Judea of the early first-century. The books of the New Testament were all or nearly all written by Jewish Christians—that is, Jewish disciples of Jesus, during the first and early second centuries Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, is frequently thought of as an exception; scholars are divided as to whether Luke was a Gentile or a Hellenistic Jew. The Gospels were written between 68-110 CE, Acts between 95-110, Epistles between 51-110 CE and Revelation in c. 95 CE.
Pseudo-Abdias
Pseudo-Abdias was published in 1703 by Johann Albert Fabricius in the second volume of a collection he had compiled of apocryphal manuscripts. He subtitled it ""Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, sive, Historia Certaminis Apostolici adscripta Abdiae"" (English: The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, or, the History of the Apostolic Struggle ascribed to Abdias).
Apostolic Age
The apostolic period between the years 30 and 100 produced writings attributed to the immediate followers of Jesus Christ. The period is traditionally associated with the apostles, hence the tags "apostolic times" and "apostolic writings". The early church associated the New Testament books with the apostles. Scholarship has cast doubt on the authorship of some New Testament books—however, most accept that the New Testament books were written during this period. In the traditional (and scholastically accepted) history of the Christian church, the Apostolic Age was the foundation of the church's history.
Martin Hengel
A large portion of Martin Hengel’s research on the canonical book, the Acts of the Apostles, focuses on the time in which Paul spends between his time in Damascus and Antioch coining these years as "the unknown years". Between Acts and the letters of Paul, Hengel, among other scholars, attempts to piece together the extent of the missionary work of Paul the apostle. Hengel highlights Paul as an "apostle to all nations" (Rom 11:13) throughout his interpretations. He also highlights the miracle of the preservation of the letters of Paul and acknowledges, in correlation with the book of Acts (which set the letters within a historical context), we receive the "nucleus of quite a new form of theological writing in earliest Christianity… and thus also for the New Testament canon".
Dorotheus of Tyre
Saint Dorotheus bishop of Tyre (present-day Lebanon) (ca. 255 – 362) is traditionally credited with an "Acts" of the Seventy Apostles (which may be the same work as the lost "Gospel of the Seventy"), who were sent out according to the "Gospel of Luke" 10:1.
Historical reliability of the Gospels
Some scholars uphold the traditional claim that Luke the Evangelist, an associate of St. Paul who was probably not an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry, wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles. Others point out that Acts contradicts Paul's own letters and denies him the important title of apostle, suggesting that the author was not a companion of Paul's.
Faits des Romains
The Faits des Romains (Li Fet des Romains; Acts of the Romans) is a Medieval work of prose written in Old French, composed in the Île-de-France, or by a native of that region, around 1213–14. It chronicles the life of Julius Caesar.
Gesta Pontificum Anglorum
The Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (Latin for "Deeds of the Bishops of the English"), originally known as De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum ("On the Deeds of the Bishops of the English") and sometimes anglicized as or , is an ecclesiastical history of England written by William of Malmesbury in the early 12th century. It covers the period from the arrival of St Augustine in AD 597 until the time it was written. Work on it was begun before Matilda's death in 1118 and the first version of the work was completed in about 1125. William drew upon extensive research, first-hand experience and a number of sources to produce the work. It is unusual for a medieval work of history, even compared to William's other works, in that its contents are so logically structured. The "History of the English Bishops" is one of the most important sources regarding the ecclesiastical history of England for the period after the death of Bede.
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
It has been claimed that the author of Acts used the writings of Josephus (specifically "Antiquities of the Jews") as a historical source. The majority of scholars reject both this claim and the claim that Josephus borrowed from Acts, arguing instead that Luke and Josephus drew on common traditions and historical sources.
Catholic Church
The New Testament, in particular the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the twelve Apostles and his Great Commission of the Apostles, instructing them to continue his work. The book Acts of Apostles, tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman empire. The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, occurring fifty days following the date Christ is believed to have resurrected. At Pentecost, the Apostles are believed to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission in leading the church. The Catholic Church teaches that the college of bishops, led by the Bishop of Rome are the successors to the Apostles.
Authorship of Luke–Acts
Furthermore, there are linguistic and theological similarities between the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. As one scholar writes, "the extensive linguistic and theological agreements and cross-references between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts indicate that both works derive from the same author". Because of their common authorship, the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles are often jointly referred to simply as Luke-Acts. Similarly, the author of Luke-Acts is often known as "Luke"—even among scholars who doubt that the author was actually named Luke.
Paul the Apostle and Judaism
The Book of Acts contains an account of Paul's travels and deeds, his conflicts with Greeks and Jews during the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and his interactions with the original apostles. The value of the historical information in "Acts", however, is challenged by some scholars. They believe that it was written from a perspective of reconciliation between Pauline Christianity and its opponents, so portrays Paul as a law-abiding Jew and omits his dispute with Peter, only briefly mentioning the split with Barnabas. Irenaeus in the 2nd century is the first of record to quote "Acts", and he used it against Marcion who rejected the Hebrew Bible. See also Luke–Acts.
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
The historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles, the principal historical source for the Apostolic Age, is of interest for biblical scholars and historians of Early Christianity as part of the debate over the historicity of the Bible.
Bede
In about 701 Bede wrote his first works, the "De Arte Metrica" and "De Schematibus et Tropis"; both were intended for use in the classroom. He continued to write for the rest of his life, eventually completing over 60 books, most of which have survived. Not all his output can be easily dated, and Bede may have worked on some texts over a period of many years. His last-surviving work is a letter to Ecgbert of York, a former student, written in 734. A 6th-century Greek and Latin manuscript of "Acts of the Apostles" that is believed to have been used by Bede survives and is now in the Bodleian Library at University of Oxford; it is known as the Codex Laudianus. Bede may also have worked on one of the Latin bibles that were copied at Jarrow, one of which is now held by the Laurentian Library in Florence. Bede was a teacher as well as a writer; he enjoyed music, and was said to be accomplished as a singer and as a reciter of poetry in the vernacular. It is possible that he suffered a speech impediment, but this depends on a phrase in the introduction to his verse life of Saint Cuthbert. Translations of this phrase differ, and it is uncertain whether Bede intended to say that he was cured of a speech problem, or merely that he was inspired by the saint's works.
In 708, some monks at Hexham accused Bede of having committed heresy in his work "De Temporibus". The standard theological view of world history at the time was known as the Six Ages of the World; in his book, Bede calculated the age of the world for himself, rather than accepting the authority of Isidore of Seville, and came to the conclusion that Christ had been born 3,952 years after the creation of the world, rather than the figure of over 5,000 years that was commonly accepted by theologians. The accusation occurred in front of the bishop of Hexham, Wilfrid, who was present at a feast when some drunken monks made the accusation. Wilfrid did not respond to the accusation, but a monk present relayed the episode to Bede, who replied within a few days to the monk, writing a letter setting forth his defence and asking that the letter also be read to Wilfrid. Bede had another brush with Wilfrid, for the historian himself says that he met Wilfrid, sometime between 706 and 709, and discussed Æthelthryth, the abbess of Ely. Wilfrid had been present at the exhumation of her body in 695, and Bede questioned the bishop about the exact circumstances of the body and asked for more details of her life, as Wilfrid had been her advisor.
John the Apostle
Until the 19th century, the authorship of the Gospel of John had been attributed to the Apostle John. However, most modern critical scholars have their doubts. Some scholars place the Gospel of John somewhere between AD 65 and 85; John Robinson proposes an initial edition by 50–55 and then a final edition by 65 due to narrative similarities with Paul. Other scholars are of the opinion that the Gospel of John was composed in two or three stages. Most contemporary scholars consider that the Gospel was not written until the latter third of the first century AD, and with an earliest possible date of AD 75-80. “...a date of AD 75-80 as the earliest possible date of composition for this Gospel.” Other scholars think that an even later date, perhaps even the last decade of the first century AD right up to the start of the 2nd century (i.e. 90 - 100), is applicable.
Acts 6
Acts 6 is the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the ordination of the first seven deacons and the work of one of them, Stephen. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
gives an account of speech by the 1st century Pharisee Gamaliel (d. ~50ad), in which he refers to two first century movements. One of these was led by Theudas. Afterwards another was led by Judas the Galilean. Josephus placed Judas at the Census of Quirinius of the year 6 and Theudas under the procurator Fadus in 44–46. Assuming Acts refers to the same Theudas as Josephus, two problems emerge. First, the order of Judas and Theudas is reversed in Acts 5. Second, Theudas's movement may come after the time when Gamaliel is speaking. It is possible that Theudas in Josephus is not the same one as in Acts, or that it is Josephus who has his dates confused. The late 2nd-century writer Origen referred to a Theudas active before the birth of Jesus, although it is possible that this simply draws on the account in "Acts".
Acts of the Apostles
Prior to the 1950s, Luke–Acts was seen as a historical work, written to defend Christianity before the Romans or Paul against his detractors; since then, however, the tendency has been to see the work as primarily theological. Luke's theology is expressed primarily through his overarching plot, the way scenes, themes and characters combine to construct his specific worldview. His "salvation history" stretches from the Creation to the present time of his readers, in three ages: first, the time of "the Law and the Prophets" (Luke 16:16), the period beginning with Genesis and ending with the appearance of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–3:1); second, the epoch of Jesus, in which the Kingdom of God was preached (Luke 3:2–24:51); and finally the period of the Church, which began when the risen Christ was taken into Heaven, and would end with his second coming.
William Mitchell Ramsay
William Ramsay was known for his careful attention to New Testament events, particularly the Book of Acts and Pauline Epistles. When he first went to Asia Minor, many of the cities mentioned in Acts had no known location and almost nothing was known of their detailed history or politics. The Acts of the Apostles was the only record and Ramsay, skeptical, fully expected his own research to prove the author of Acts hopelessly inaccurate since no man could possibly know the details of Asia Minor more than a hundred years after the event—this is, when Acts was then supposed to have been written. He therefore set out to put the writer of Acts on trial. He devoted his life to unearthing the ancient cities and documents of Asia Minor. After a lifetime of study, however, he concluded: 'Further study … showed that the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement' ("The Bearing of Recent Discovery", p. 85). On page 89 of the same book, Ramsay accounted, 'I set out to look for truth on the borderland where Greece and Asia meet, and found it there [in Acts]. You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian's and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment...'
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
By 2017 consensus had emerged among scholars that the letters of Paul are more reliable for information about Paul than Acts and that, according to Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons, "Acts must be carefully sifted and mined for historical information."
Acts of the Apostles
Acts agrees with Paul's letters on the major outline of Paul's career: he is converted and becomes a Christian missionary and apostle, establishing new churches in Asia Minor and the Aegean and struggling to free Gentile Christians from the Jewish Law. There are also agreements on many incidents, such as Paul's escape from Damascus, where he is lowered down the walls in a basket. But details of these same incidents are frequently seen as contradictory: for example, according to Paul it was a pagan king who was trying to arrest him in Damascus, but according to Luke it was the Jews (2 Corinthians 11:33 and Acts 9:24). Acts speaks of "Christians" and "disciples", but Paul never uses either term, and it is striking that Acts never brings Paul into conflict with the Jerusalem church and places Paul under the authority of the Jerusalem church and its leaders, especially James and Peter (Acts 15 vs. Galatians 2). Acts omits much from the letters, notably Paul's problems with his congregations (internal difficulties are said to be the fault of the Jews instead), and his apparent final rejection by the church leaders in Jerusalem (Acts has Paul and Barnabas deliver an offering that is accepted, a trip that has no mention in the letters). There are also alleged major differences between Acts and Paul on Christology (the understanding of Christ's nature), eschatology (understanding of the "last things"), and apostleship.
Canons of the Apostles
The last of these decrees contains a very important list or canon of the Holy Scriptures. In the original Koine Greek text they claim to be the very legislation of the Apostles themselves, as promulgated by what was then known as the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Christian Church. The notion that they could not be directly apostolic in origin is a common theme among post-Reformation Christians. However, the Eastern Orthodox Church holds them in high regard, and believes in their divine inspiration as passed down from the nascent times of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church i.e. beginning with the preachings of Jesus Christ and as promulgated in the early church by the Apostles and their disciples. Some, like Beveridge and Hefele, believe that they were originally drawn up about the end of the second or the beginning of the 3rd century.
Canons of the Apostles
The Apostolic Canons or Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles is a 4th century Syrian Christian text. It is an Ancient Church Order, a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, allegedly written by the Apostles first found as the last chapter of the eighth book of the "Apostolic Constitutions". Like the other Ancient Church Orders, the Apostolic Canons use a pseudepigraphic form.
Acts 24
Acts 24 is the twenty-fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the period of Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Biblical canon
Writings attributed to the apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the "memoirs of the Apostles", which Christians (Greek: Χριστιανός) called "gospels", and which were considered to be authoritatively equal to the Old Testament.
Paul the Apostle
Others have objected that the language of the speeches is too Lukan in style to reflect anyone else's words. Moreover, George Shillington writes that the author of Acts most likely created the speeches accordingly and they bear his literary and theological marks. Conversely, Howard Marshall writes that the speeches were not entirely the inventions of the author and while they may not be accurate word-for-word, the author nevertheless records the general idea of them.
Acts 2
The original text is written in Koine Greek and is divided into 47 verses. Some most ancient manuscripts containing this chapter are:The biblical narrative of Pentecost is given in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. Present were about one hundred and twenty followers of Christ (), including the Twelve Apostles (i.e. the eleven faithful disciples and Matthias who had replaced Judas Iscariot), his mother Mary, various other women disciples and his brothers (). Their reception of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room and their empowerment to speak in tongues are recounted in Acts 2:1–6:
The Fates of the Apostles
"The Fates of the Apostles" (Vercelli Book, fol. 52b–54a) is the shortest of Cynewulf’s known canon at 122 lines long. It is a brief martyrology of the Twelve Apostles written in the standard alliterative verse. "The Fates" recites the key events that subsequently befell each apostle after the Ascension of Jesus. It is possible that "The Fates" was composed as a learning aid to the monasteries.
New Testament apocrypha
Several texts concern themselves with the subsequent lives of the apostles, usually with highly supernatural events. Almost half of these, anciently called "The Circuits of the Apostles" and now known by the name of their purported author, "Leucius Charinus" (supposedly a companion of John the apostle), contained the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul. These were judged by the Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople in the ninth century to be full of folly, self-contradiction, falsehood, and impiety. The "Acts of Thomas" and the "Acts of Peter and the Twelve" are often considered Gnostic texts. While most of the texts are believed to have been written in the 2nd century, at least two, the "Acts of Barnabas" and the "Acts of Peter and Paul" are believed to have been written as late as the 5th century.There are also non-canonical epistles (or "letters") between individuals or to Christians in general. Some of them were regarded very highly by the early church.
Those marked with a lozenge (♦) are included in the collection known as the Apostolic Fathers:Several works frame themselves as visions, often discussing the future, afterlife, or both:Several texts (over 50) consist of descriptions of the events surrounding the varied fate of Mary (the mother of Jesus):These texts, due to their content or form, do not fit into the other categories:In addition to the known apocryphal works, there are also small fragments of texts, parts of unknown (or uncertain) works. Some of the more significant fragments are:Several texts are mentioned in many ancient sources and would probably be considered part of the apocrypha, but no known text has survived:While many of the books listed here were considered heretical (especially those belonging to the gnostic tradition—as this sect was considered heretical by Proto-orthodox Christianity of the early centuries), others were not considered particularly heretical in content, but in fact were well accepted as significant spiritual works. Those marked with a lozenge (♦) are also included in the collection known as the Apostolic Fathers.
Pirdop Apostle
The Pirdop Apostle is a medieval Bulgarian script book in Middle Bulgarian language from Elena Basilica scriptorium near Pirdop, now kept in the SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library (№ 497). It consists of the Acts of the Apostles with 130 surviving parchment leaves, the beginning and end parts being lost. It initially contained all the texts of the Acts and the Letters of the Apostles, but now only the Letters are preserved. It dates from the 13th century. In the 19th century the book was discovered immured in a niche of the church known as the "Elena Basilica" of "St. Elijah" monastery near to the small Bulgarian town of Pirdop. The Monastery and church was looted and completely destroyed by the Ottoman Army in 1700.
Gamaliel
In some manuscripts of Dunash ibn Tamim's tenth-century Hebrew commentary on the "Sefer Yetzirah", the author identifies Gamaliel with the physician Galen. He claims to have seen an Arabic medical work translated from Hebrew entitled "The Book of Gamaliel the Prince (Nasi), called Galenos among the Greeks". However, since Galen lived in the second century and Gamaliel died during the mid-first century, this is unlikely.
The Acts of the Apostles introduces Gamaliel as a Pharisee and celebrated doctor of the Mosaic Law in . In the larger context (vs.), Peter and the other apostles are described as being prosecuted before the Sanhedrin for continuing to preach the gospel despite the Jewish authorities having previously prohibited it. The passage describes Gamaliel as presenting an argument against killing the apostles, reminding them about the previous revolts of Theudas and Judas of Galilee, which had collapsed quickly after the deaths of those individuals. Gamaliel's advice was accepted after his concluding argument:
Incident at Antioch
However, this account seems to possibly be in tension with the account of an incident at Antioch given by Paul in his letters, and the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles is disputed.
New Testament
The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were both written by the same author, and are thus referred to as the Lucan texts. The most direct evidence comes from the prefaces of each book; both were addressed to Theophilus, and the preface to the Acts of the Apostles references "my former book" about the ministry of Jesus. Furthermore, there are linguistic and theological similarities between the two works, suggesting that they have a common author.
The Pauline epistles are the thirteen books in the New Testament traditionally attributed to Paul of Tarsus. The anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews is, despite unlikely Pauline authorship, often functionally grouped with these thirteen to form a corpus of fourteen "Pauline" epistles.
Richard Knowling
Knowling’s publications included "The Witness of the Epistles" (1892), but his main period of writing was from 1901 onwards. In addition to original work he contributed to the content on The Acts of the Apostles in the "Expositors Greek Testament" and the Epistle of St James in the "Westminster Commentaries", whilst also contributing to the "Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels" and the "Dictionary of Christian Biography".
The Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles
The Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, also known as the "Sonnini Manuscript", is a short text purporting to be the translation of a manuscript containing the 29th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, detailing Paul the Apostle's journey to Britannia, where he preached to a tribe of Israelites on Ludgate Hill, the site of St Paul's Cathedral.
Epistula Apostolorum
The text is commonly dated to the 2nd century, perhaps towards the middle of it. (See "New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and related writings", Volume 1. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., Westminster John Knox Press, 1991 , p. 251). CE Hill (1999) dates the Epistle to "just before 120, or in the 140s" and places "... the Epistula in Asia Minor in the first half of the second century."
Paul the Apostle
The two main sources of information by which we have access to the earliest segments of Paul's career are the Bible's Book of Acts and the autobiographical elements of Paul's letters to the early church communities. Paul was likely born between the years of 5 BC and 5 AD. The Book of Acts indicates that Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, but Helmut Koester takes issue with the evidence presented by the text.
Acts 22
Acts 22 is the twenty-second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the event leading to Paul's imprisonment in Jerusalem. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Authorship of Luke–Acts
The view that Luke-Acts was written by the physician Luke was nearly unanimous in the early Christian church. The "Papyrus Bodmer" XIV, which is the oldest known manuscript containing the ending of the gospel (dating to around 200 AD), uses the subscription "The Gospel According to Luke". Nearly all ancient sources also shared this theory of authorship—Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and the Muratorian Canon all regarded Luke as the author of the Luke-Acts. Neither Eusebius of Caesarea nor any other ancient writer mentions another tradition about authorship.
Historicity and origin of the resurrection of Jesus
The next texts that mention the resurrection are the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. These date from between 70 and 110 AD, and it is almost certain that none of them were written by eyewitnesses. Evidence of this can be seen in the conflicts between them: to take a few examples, according to the Synoptic Gospels Jesus' mission took one year, was spent primarily in Galilee, and climaxed with a single visit to Jerusalem at which he cleansed the Temple of the money-changers, while in John, Jerusalem was the focus of Jesus' mission, he visited it three times (making his mission last three years rather than one), and the cleansing of the Temple took place at the beginning rather than the end of the ministry. Mark, written in the period 65-75 CE, originally contained no post-Resurrection appearances, although Mark 16:7, in which the young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell "the disciples and Peter" that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author may have known of the tradition.
Canons of the Apostles
There is some controversy over the number of these canons. In the "Apostolic Constitutions" (loc. cit.) they are eighty-five (occasionally eighty-four, a variant in the Manuscripts that arises from the occasional counting of two canons as one). In the latter half of the 6th century, John of Antioch (Joannes Scholasticus), Patriarch of Constantinople from 565 to 577, published a collection of synodal decrees in which he included these eighty-five canons, and this number was finally consecrated for the Greek Church by the Trullan or Quinisext Council of 692, which stopped short of affirming their apostolic authorship, instead referring to them as having been handed down in the name of the Apostles.
Apostles
By the 2nd century AD, association with the apostles was esteemed as an evidence of authority. Churches which are believed to have been founded by one of the apostles are known as apostolic sees. Paul's epistles were accepted as scripture, and two of the four canonical gospels were associated with apostles, as were other New Testament works. Various Christian texts, such as the "Didache" and the "Apostolic Constitutions", were attributed to the apostles. Bishops traced their lines of succession back to individual apostles, who were said to have dispersed from Jerusalem and established churches across great territories. Christian bishops have traditionally claimed authority deriving, by apostolic succession, from the Twelve. Early Church Fathers who came to be associated with apostles, such as Pope Clement I with St. Peter, are referred to as the Apostolic Fathers. The Apostles' Creed, popular in the West, was said to have been composed by the apostles themselves.
Ancient Church Orders
A characteristic of this genre is their pseudepigraphic form. Many of them profess to have been handed down by the Twelve Apostles, in some case purported to have been gathered by Clement of Rome or by Hippolytus of Rome. In the earliest of them, the Didache, extends to the title: "The teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles". The later Testamentum Domini declares itself to be the legacy left by Jesus Christ himself to his Apostles before the Ascension, and to give his own words and commands as to the government of the Church. Apart from the Apostolic Constitutions, which was printed before 1563, all other texts have been discovered and published in the 19th or early 20th century.
Islamic views on Jesus' death
Acts of John is also a docetic gospel. It is a collection of narratives and traditions ascribed to John the Apostle, who was the author of the Gospel of John. It is long known in fragmentary form. Together with the Acts of Paul it is considered one of the most significant of the apostolic Acts in the New Testament apocrypha. It was condemned as a Gnostic heresy by the Church.
Chapter 101 of this work continues with phrases like "Therefore I have suffered none of the things which they will say of me", "You hear that I have suffered, yet I have suffered not," and "(they say) that I was pierced, but I was not wounded; that I was hanged, but I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, yet it did not flow; and, in a word, those things that they say of me I did not endure.
Historiography of early Christianity
F. C. Baur (1792–1860), professor of theology at Tübingen in Germany, the first scholar to critique Acts and the Pauline Epistles, and founder of the Tübingen School of theology, argued that Paul, as the "Apostle to the Gentiles", was in violent opposition to the original 12 Apostles. Baur considers the Acts of the Apostles were late and unreliable. This debate has continued ever since, with Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937) and Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) emphasising Paul's Greek inheritance and Albert Schweitzer stressing his dependence on Judaism.
Acts of Timothy
The Acts of Timothy (Acta Timothei) are a work of New Testament apocrypha, most likely from the 5th century, which are primarily concerned with portraying the apostle Timothy as the first bishop of Ephesus and describing his death during a violent pagan festival in the same town.
Christopher Tye
Later, in 1553, Christopher Tye published for the first and only time one of his more well known works entitled, "The Actes of the Apostles". In it he takes the ideas set forth in the book of 'Acts' in the Bible and sets them to meter. Although it was met with divided reviews (even today), the work is hugely important because it is dedicated to Edward. In the preface he goes into some detail that implies a kind of friendship between the two. Although it is never mentioned explicitly, it is generally assumed that Tye held a position in the Chapel Royal Staff during the 1550s at some point.
Church Fathers
The Apostolic Fathers were Christian theologians who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, who are believed to have personally known some of the Twelve Apostles, or to have been significantly influenced by them. Their writings, though popular in Early Christianity, were ultimately not included in the canon of the New Testament once it reached its final form. Many of the writings derive from the same time period and geographical location as other works of early Christian literature that did come to be part of the New Testament, and some of the writings found among the Apostolic Fathers' seem to have been just as highly regarded as some of the writings that became the New Testament.
Acts of Philip
The Greek Acts of Philip (Acta Philippi) is an unorthodox episodic apocryphal book of acts from the mid-to-late fourth century, originally in fifteen separate "acta", that gives an accounting of the miraculous acts performed by the Apostle Philip, with overtones of the heroic romance.
Some of these episodes are identifiable as belonging to more closely related "cycles". Two episodes recounting events of Philip's commission (3 and 8) have survived in both shorter and longer versions. There is no commission narrative in the surviving texts: Philip's authority rests on the prayers and benediction of Peter and John and is explicitly bolstered by a divine epiphany, in which the voice of Jesus urges "Hurry Philip! Behold, my angel is with you, do not neglect your task" and "Jesus is secretly walking with him".(ch. 3).
Acts 2
Acts 2 is the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the events on the day of Pentecost, about 10 days after the ascension of Jesus Christ.
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
Archaeological inscriptions and other independent sources show that Acts contains some accurate details of 1st century society with regard to titles of officials, administrative divisions, town assemblies, and rules of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. However, the historicity of the depiction of Paul the Apostle in Acts is contested. Acts describes Paul differently from how Paul describes himself, both factually and theologically. Acts differs with Paul's letters on important issues, such as the Law, Paul's own , and his relation to the Jerusalem church. Scholars generally prefer Paul's account over that in Acts.
Acts 20
Acts 20 is the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the third missionary journey of Paul. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
Like most New Testament books, there are differences between the earliest surviving manuscripts of Acts. In the case of Acts, however, the differences between the surviving manuscripts are more substantial than most. Arguably the two earliest versions of manuscripts are the Western text-type (as represented by the Codex Bezae) and the Alexandrian text-type (as represented by the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus which was not seen in Europe until 1859). The version of Acts preserved in the Western manuscripts contains about 6.2-8.5% more content than the Alexandrian version of Acts (depending on the definition of a variant).
Authorship of Luke–Acts
The authorship of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, collectively known as Luke–Acts, is an important issue for biblical exegetes who are attempting to produce critical scholarship on the origins of the New Testament. Traditionally, the text is believed to have been written by Luke the companion of Paul (named in Colossians ). However, the earliest manuscripts are anonymous, and the traditional view has been challenged by many modern scholars.
Acts of the Apostles
While no proposed date for the composition of Acts is universally accepted, the most common scholarly position is to date Luke–Acts to 80-90 AD, on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century). The earliest possible date for the composition of Acts is set by the events with which it ends, Paul's imprisonment in Rome c.63 AD, but such an early dating is a minority position. The last possible date would be set by its first definite citation by another author, but there is no unanimity on this; some scholars find echoes of Acts in a work from c. 95 AD called I Clement, while others see no indisputable citation until the middle of the 2nd century. A minority of scholars, necessarily in the latter camp, conclude that Acts dates to the 2nd century, believing that it shows awareness of the letters of Paul, the works of Josephus, or the writings of Marcion.
Gospel of Nicodemus
As the Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (writing "c." 325) shows no acquaintance with this Gospel, historians assume that it postdates this time. Eusebius was aware of related texts: the "Letters of Pilate" referred to by Justin and Tertullian as well as an anti-Christian text called "Acts of Pilate", which was prescribed for reading in schools under the emperor Maximinus during the Diocletianic Persecution. "We are forced to admit that [the Christian "Acts of Pilate"] is of later origin, and scholars agree in assigning it to the middle of the fourth century." Epiphanius refers to an "Acta Pilati" ("c." 376), but the extant Greek texts show evidence of later editing.
Apostles
According to Church tradition, Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul, is believed to have authored the Gospel of Luke, though anonymously written and lacking an author's name; but while this view is still occasionally put forward the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters. The most probable date for its composition is around 80–110 AD, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.
James, brother of Jesus
The New Testament mentions several people named James. The Pauline epistles, from about the sixth decade of the 1st century, have two passages mentioning a James. The Acts of the Apostles, written sometime between 60 and 150 AD, also describes the period before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It has three mentions of a James. The Gospels, with disputed datings ranging from about 50 to as late as 130 AD, describe the period of Jesus' ministry, around 30-33 AD. It mentions at least two different people named James. The author of the Epistle of Jude notes that he is a brother of James in that epistle's opening paragraph.
Thomas the Apostle
According to tradition, in 232 AD, the greater portion of relics of the Apostle Thomas are said to have been sent by an Indian king and brought from Mylapore to the city of Edessa, Mesopotamia, on which occasion his Syriac "Acts" were written.
New Testament
Most scholars hold to the two-source hypothesis, which claims that the Gospel of Mark was written first. According to the hypothesis, the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke then used the Gospel of Mark and the hypothetical Q document, in addition to some other sources, to write their individual gospel accounts. These three gospels are called the Synoptic gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. Scholars agree that the Gospel of John was written last, by using a different tradition and body of testimony. In addition, most scholars agree that the author of Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Scholars hold that these books constituted two halves of a single work, Luke-Acts.
Strictly speaking, each gospel and the book of Acts is arguably anonymous. The Gospel of John is somewhat of an exception, although the author simply refers to himself as "the disciple Jesus loved" and claims to be a member of Jesus' inner circle. The identities of each author were agreed upon at an early date, certainly no later than the early 2nd century. It is likely that the issue of the authorship of each gospel had been settled at least somewhat earlier, as the earliest sources are in complete agreement on the issue. No one questioned the early 2nd century consensus until the 18th century.
Liturgy of the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions
The Apostolic Constitutions consist of eight books purporting to have been written by St. Clement of Rome (died c. 104). The first six books are an interpolated edition of the "Didascalia Apostolorum" ("Teaching of the Apostles and Disciples", written in the first half of the third century and since edited in a Syriac version by de Lagarde, 1854); the seventh book is an equally modified version of the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, probably written in the first century, and found by Philotheos Bryennios in 1883) with a collection of prayers. The eighth book contains a complete liturgy and the eighty-five "Apostolic Canons". There is also part of a liturgy modified from the Didascalia in the second book.
Acts 7
Acts 7 is the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the address of Stephen before the Sanhedrin and his execution outside Jerusalem, and introduces Saul (who later became Paul the Apostle). The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Acts 27
Acts 27 is the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the journey of Paul from Caesarea heading to Rome, but stranded for a time in Malta. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Acts 25
Acts 25 is the twenty-fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the period of Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
The Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles
The canonical book of "Acts" ends rather abruptly with Paul kept under house arrest in chapter 28, which has led to various theories about the history of the text.
Editio Critica Maior
The Acts of the Apostels
Catholic Letters
Parallel Pericopes
Acta Andreae et Matthiae apud Anthropophagos
Acta Andreae et Matthiae apud Anthropophagos ("The Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the Anthropophagi") which exists in several Latin manuscript traditions, is the dramatic romance featuring the Apostles Andrew and Matthias among the cannibals, a thriller featuring gory details that was written for a Christian audience in the 2nd century CE. Constantin von Tischendorf published an edited text following Johann Karl Thilo, 1846.
Acts of the Apostles (genre)
The Acts of the Apostles is a genre of Early Christian literature, recounting the lives and works of the apostles of Jesus. The "Acts" (Latin: "Acta", Greek: Πράξεις "Práxeis") are important for many reasons, one of them being the concept of apostolic succession. They also provide insight into the valuation of "missionary activities among the exotic races," since some of them feature missionary work done among, for instance, the Cynocephaly.
Luke–Acts
The traditional view holds that they were written by Luke named in Colossians , a physician and follower of Paul the Apostle, but modern scholars reject that view. The work is Hellenized and written for a gentile audience possibly, in part, to counter a gnostic understanding of history. Marcion, a famous 2nd-century heretic, who used a modified form of Luke known as the Gospel of Marcion, did not use Acts, perhaps because he was unaware of it or intentionally excluded it from his biblical canon; Irenaeus, a proto-orthodox apologist, is the first to use and mention Acts, specifically against Marcionism.
Development of the New Testament canon
Writings attributed to the Apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating, perhaps in collected forms, by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the mid 2nd century, mentions "memoirs of the apostles" as being read on "the day called that of the sun" (Sunday) alongside the "writings of the prophets." A defined set of four gospels (the "Tetramorph") was asserted by Irenaeus, "c". 180, who refers to it directly.
Acts of the Apostles
Acts was read as a reliable history of the early church well into the post-Reformation era. By the 17th century, however, biblical scholars began to notice that it was incomplete and tendentious—its picture of a harmonious church is quite at odds with that given by Paul's letters, and it omits important events such as the deaths of both Peter and Paul. The mid-19th-century scholar Ferdinand Baur suggested that the author of Acts had re-written history to present a united Peter and Paul and advance a single orthodoxy against the Marcionites. (Marcion was a 2nd-century heretic who wished to cut Christianity off entirely from the Jews). Baur continues to have enormous influence, but today there is less interest in determining the author of Acts' historical accuracy (although this has never died out) than in understanding his theological program.
Theophilus (biblical)
Theophilus is the name or honorary title of the person to whom the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are addressed (Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1). It is thought that both the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles were written by the same author, and often argued that the two books were originally a single unified work. Both Luke and Acts were written in a refined Koine Greek, and the name "θεόφιλος" ("Theophilos"), as it appears therein, means "friend of God" or "(be)loved by God" or "loving God" in the Greek language. No one knows the true identity of Theophilus and there are several conjectures and traditions around an identity. In English Theophilus is also written "Theophilos", both a common name and an honorary title among the learned (academic) Romans and Jews of the era. The life of Theophilus would coincide with the writing of Luke and the author of the Acts.
Acts 9
Acts 9 is the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records Saul's conversion and the works of Saint Peter. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.
Acts and Epistles of the Apostles
Acts and Epistles of the Apostles (the "Apostle"), completed in 1564, is the first Russian printed publication that has an exact date. It was published by Ivan Fyodorov (Ива́н Фёдоров).
Les Actes des Apotres
The first number of "Les Actes" appeared on November 2, 1789, and subsequent issues at two-day intervals thereafter. Edited by Antoine de Rivarol, its contributors included Louis de Champcenetz, Gérard de Lally-Tollendal, the Comte de Montlosier, Jean-Gabriel Peltier, and Francois Suleau.
Acts 17
Acts 17 is the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the second missionary journey of Paul, together with Silas and Timothy. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.This chapter mentions the following places (in order of appearance):
Acts of Peter
The Acts of Peter is one of the earliest of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The majority of the text has survived only in the Latin translation of the Vercelli manuscript, under the title "Actus Petri cum Simone". It is mainly notable for a description of a miracle contest between Saint Peter and Simon Magus, and as the first record of the tradition that St. Peter was crucified head-down.
Paul the Apostle
F. C. Baur (1792–1860), professor of theology at Tübingen in Germany, the first scholar to critique Acts and the Pauline Epistles, and founder of the Tübingen School of theology, argued that Paul, as the "Apostle to the Gentiles", was in violent opposition to the original 12 Apostles. Baur considers the Acts of the Apostles were late and unreliable. This debate has continued ever since, with Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937) and Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) emphasising Paul's Greek inheritance and Albert Schweitzer stressing his dependence on Judaism.
Acts of the Apostles
The author of Acts may have taken as his model the works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a well-known history of Rome, or the Jewish historian Josephus, author of a history of the Jews. Like them, he anchors his history by dating the birth of the founder (Romulus for Dionysius, Moses for Josephus, Jesus for Luke) and like them he tells how the founder is born from God, taught authoritatively, and appeared to witnesses after death before ascending to heaven. By and large the sources for Acts can only be guessed at, but the author would have had access to the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures), the Gospel of Mark, and either the hypothetical collection of "sayings of Jesus" called the Q source or the Gospel of Matthew. He transposed a few incidents from Mark's gospel to the time of the Apostles—for example, the material about "clean" and "unclean" foods in Mark 7 is used in Acts 10, and Mark's account of the accusation that Jesus has attacked the Temple (Mark 14:58) is used in a story about Stephen (Acts 6:14).) There are also points of contacts (meaning suggestive parallels but something less than clear evidence) with 1 Peter, the Letter to the Hebrews, and 1 Clement. Other sources can only be inferred from internal evidence—the traditional explanation of the three "we" passages, for example, is that they represent eye-witness accounts. The search for such inferred sources was popular in the 19th century, but by the mid-20th it had largely been abandoned.
Ferdinand Christian Baur
He next proceeded to investigate other Pauline epistles and the "Acts of the Apostles" in the same manner, publishing his results in 1845 under the title "Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre". In this he contends that only the Epistle to the Galatians, First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians and Epistle to the Romans are genuinely Pauline, and that the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles is a different person from the Paul of these genuine Epistles, the author being a Paulinist who, with an eye to the different parties in the Church, is at pains to represent Peter as far as possible as a Paulinist and Paul as far as possible as a Petrinist.
Acts of the Apostles
Acts (or Luke–Acts) is intended as a work of "edification." Edification means "the empirical demonstration that virtue is superior to vice," but is not all of Luke's purpose. He also engages with the question of a Christian's proper relationship with the Roman Empire, the civil power of the day: could a Christian obey God and also Caesar? The answer is ambiguous. The Romans never move against Jesus or his followers unless provoked by the Jews, in the trial scenes the Christian missionaries are always cleared of charges of violating Roman laws, and Acts ends with Paul in Rome proclaiming the Christian message under Roman protection; at the same time, Luke makes clear that the Romans, like all earthly rulers, receive their authority from Satan, while Christ is ruler of the kingdom of God.
Religious law
The Canons of the Apostles or "Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles" is a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees (eighty-five in the Eastern, fifty in the Western Church) concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, incorporated with the Apostolic Constitutions which are part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers
Historical reliability of the Gospels
The following table lists the earliest extant Gospel manuscripts.
Most scholars hold to the two-source hypothesis which claims that the Gospel of Mark was written first. According to the hypothesis, the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke then used the "Gospel of Mark" and the hypothetical Q document, in addition to some other sources, to write their individual gospels. Scholars agree that the Gospel of John was written last, by using a different tradition and body of testimony. In addition, most scholars agree that the author of Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Scholars hold that these books constituted two halves of a single work, Luke-Acts.
Strictly speaking, each Gospel is anonymous. The "Gospel of John" is something of an exception, although the author simply refers to himself as "the disciple Jesus loved" and claims to be a member of Jesus' inner circle. During the following centuries, each canonical gospel was attributed to an apostle or to the close associate of an apostle. Most scholars have rejected the traditional attributions.
Myra
The author of the Acts of the Apostles (probably Luke the Evangelist) and Paul the Apostle changed ships here during their journey from Caesarea to Rome for Paul's trial, arriving in a coastal trading vessel and changing to a sea-faring skiff secured by the Roman centurion responsible for Paul's transportation to Rome.
Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles
The Holy Spirit plays a key role in the Acts of the Apostles, leading to the use of the titles "Book of the Holy Spirit" or the "Acts of the Holy Spirit" for that book of the New Testament. Of the about seventy occurrences of the word "Pneuma" in Acts, fifty five refer to the Holy Spirit.
From the start, in , the reader is reminded that the Ministry of Jesus, while he was on earth, was carried out through the power of the Holy Spirit and that the "acts of the apostles" are the continuing acts of Jesus, facilitated by the Holy Spirit. Acts thus presents the Holy Spirit as the "life principle" of the early Church and provides five separate and dramatic instances of its outpouring on believers in , , , and .
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
Two early sources that mention the origins of Christianity are the "Antiquities of the Jews" by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, and the "Church History" of Eusebius. Josephus and Luke-Acts are thought to be approximately contemporaneous, around AD 90, and Eusebius wrote some two and a quarter centuries later.