Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles (in ancient Greek, Πράξεις τῶν Ἀποστόλων, Práxeis tôn Apostólōn; in Latin, Actūs Apostolōrum), also known as the Book of Acts or simply Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament. The book develops the history of the founding of the Christian Church and the expansion of Christianity by the Roman Empire.

Acts and the Gospel of Luke form a single two-part work (Luke-Acts or opus lucanum) written between AD 80 and 90. C. The book itself at the beginning states that it is a second part. However, the texts were separated before the manuscripts that survived to this day were written. With this separation, it was sought to cultivate the knowledge of the gospels as a unit of sacred archives, to which the Acts served as a kind of appendix. It is of unique historical interest and value: there is no other book like it within the New Testament.

Its abbreviation for citations is Hch in Spanish and Act in Latin.

The book of Acts is the only history of the early Church, primitive in both spirit and substance; without it it would be impossible to have a coherent picture of the apostolic age. With him, the Pauline epistles are of incalculable historical value; without it, they would remain incomprehensibly fragmentary and incomplete, often even confusing.

It does not contain the history of all the apostles, but only that of Peter and Paul. John is mentioned only three times, and all that is told of James, the son of Zebedee, is his execution by Herod Agrippa I. Early in the book the twelve apostles are mentioned (Acts 1:13,26), including Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot. Also throughout the book Barnabas of Cyprus, Mark, James the "brother of the Lord" and other New Testament figures are mentioned.

Authorship and context

Title, Luke-Acts unit, authorship and dating

The title "Acts of the Apostles" (Greek: Πράξεις ἀποστόλων Praxeis Apostolon) was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not clear if the title was coined by Irenaeus or if it already existed before. However, it seems clear that the author did not give the work a title.

The Gospel of Luke and Acts form a two-volume work often referred to by scholars as Luke-Acts. This work makes up more than a quarter of the entire text of the New Testament, so its author made the contribution more extensive to the New Testament canon. Luke-Acts is a representation of the historical context into which subsequent generations of Christians embedded their idea of the story of Jesus and the early church.

External evidence, which is relatively large and early, such as the Muratorian fragment, a 7th-century translation of a 18th-century Greek text II discovered by Ludovico Antonio Muratori in the 18th century, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen all point to Lucas, Paul's companion, who perhaps was with him as a physician.

The book of Acts itself indicates that it was written by a companion of Paul's. In Acts 16:10 the writer, without warning, switches from the third person to the first person: "But when he saw the vision immediately we tried to move forward." Macedonia".

Evidence of third gospel authorship also counts for Acts and compare Luke 1:1-4 with Acts 1: 1. Although the author never mentions his own name, the tradition of attributing authorship to Lucas dates back to at least the second quarter of the century II .

Dating

Ecclesiastical Slavic Edition of 1644

The majority dating (Norman Perrin, E. Lohse, P. Vielhauer, O. Cullman) places this book in the 80s, because this is the decade in which the Gospel according to Saint Luke is usually dated, which precedes it. However, the dating range that can be found in the bibliography on this subject is very wide.

The latest dating is limited by the existence of papyrus P45, from the first half of the 3rd century and by the mention that the Epistula apostolorum makes of this text in the middle of the century II. Authors such as E. Schürer or F. C. Burkitt have suggested that Acts was later than Flavio Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, by pointing out possible dependencies of Acts with respect to the work of Josephus. This theory has been refuted by authors such as Adolf von Harnack, F. J. Foackes Jackson, W. Kümmel, G. W. H. Lampe and T. W. Manson.

Some authors (B. Reicke, C. Vidal) propose dates prior to the year 70 or even to the year 62, based on the following data:

• The book ends abruptly with the beginning of Paul's captivity in Rome, about 60.
• Although the martyrdom of the disciple Stephen and the apostle James, the son of Zebedee, does not mention that of James the Righteous, which took place in the year 62 and would have made an important argument to portray the Jewish leaders as enemies of the gospel, exculpating the Romans in the same conciliatory tone as the rest of the book.
• He does not mention the death of Peter in the persecutions of Nero in the 62-64 years.
• Nor does the death of the most prominent character of the book, Paul of Tarsus, also as a martyr, in the 1960s.
• He presents the Jewish leaders, especially the Sadducees, as enemies, among whom the Romans are not so clearly included, in a manner similar to the Gospel of Luke. This does not seem consistent with the atmosphere of Roman persecution against Christianity that began with Nero.
• Nor is it mentioned, directly or indirectly, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in the 1970s, which would have served to strengthen the image of Jesus as the son of God.
• The main problem that this theory presents is that Luke 21 prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem. Since prophecy is supposed to be written after the end of the war in the 1970s, it is usually placed in Luke after this date. However, authors like C.C. Torrey and C.H. Dodd expose that Luke 21 does not give any historical details of the destruction of Jerusalem, but takes all the images of the Old Testament.

Facts about Jesus of Nazareth

The story is historiographically less reliable than others with respect to the biography of Jesus of Nazareth, because it is later, after the Gospel of Saint Luke, and more elaborate from a catechetical point of view and for the creation process of the church. It contains only accounts of the resurrection and some sayings attributed to Peter. He mentions "James the brother of John", in what coincides with Paul's letters.

Theme

Symbols