Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Three)

The first two installments of this essay can be read here (part 1) and here (part 2).


After Stephen’s martyrdom, Luke indicates that a new level of persecution fell upon the church. In response, the believers were sent away with only the Twelve witnesses/disciples left behind to maintain a presence in Jerusalem. The narrative then switches to Phillip, one of the seven elected to teach from among the converted, who goes to Samaria and finds success spreading the gospel. It is curious that Samaria is listed as the first outreach center as the Samaritans are so widely impugned in the Gospels that one has only to put the word Good” in front of Samaritan to know precisely which Samaritan we mean. Could it be that the Nazarene sect’s persecution in Jerusalem won them sympathetic ears among those who might otherwise be foes?

Luke makes no mention of this irony, writing only that, “the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Phillip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did” [8:6]. Even this little information gives us a pretty good idea of what Phillip’s ministry would have looked like; beginning with an exhortation to repent and be baptized in Jesus’s name, followed by the baptism and indoctrination of the new believers. It is not certain if Phillip continued the communal model of the first Jerusalem congregation though the conspicuous absence of any mention of food or bread breaking suggests that he did not.

While in Samaria, Phillip met “a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city” [8:9] and not only converted him but took him on as a disciple. This relationship is interesting for a couple of different reasons. First, it reiterates, if not confirms, the idea that there was a whole social/vocational class of people who performed miracles among the sick and the poor that we might associate more specifically with the authority of the Christ. When Phillip arrives preaching and performing miracles, there was already an expectation among the people for what he was and what he could do for Simon, “had amazed the nation of Samaria” and “they all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest, saying ‘This man is that power of God which is called Great’” [8:10]. A somewhat skeptical reading of this passage might even suggest that Phillip brought Simon over to his cause first and, by so doing, was able to make a deep impression on the people through his conversion.

After the body of believers there reached a certain threshold, Peter and John came down from Jerusalem to facilitate in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit among them. This indicates at least a two-step initiation into the fold, first baptism in the name of Jesus and then, a meeting with the higher ups to confirm membership and receive the indwelling of the Hold Spirit through the laying on of hands. This passage makes it abundantly clear that while Phillip (and we presume Simon) had the authority to preach, heal, and perform other miracles in Jesus’s name, only one of the twelve witnesses (ie someone who had received instruction from Jesus after his resurrection) could oversee the commission of the Holy Spirit to a new believer. One can understand Simon’s motivation for the pragmatic offer that follows but Peter’s response is especially telling.

Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot it in this matter, for your heart is not right with God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you.” [8:20-22]

Simon, a career magician with an excellent reputation among the Samaritans, treats the laying on of hands to impart the Holy Spirit like a new craft in his trade and is, quite reasonably, willing to pay the originators for the right to use it. The text is ambiguous about who exactly had the authority to baptize in Jesus’s name; perhaps, only the seven elected from the converted, but probably more. The ability to bestow the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was given, initially, only upon the Twelve. Setting aside the theological concerns for a moment, Peter’s response indicated that the Twelve saw their unique role in the two-part initiation process as fundamental to maintaining control over the faith as it spread beyond Jerusalem. Luke spends the rest of the eighth chapter on another anecdote regarding Phillip’s conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch on the road to Gaza that offers little in the way of new information.

Chapter nine, however, is a pivotal one in the Acts of the Apostles as it shifts the narrative away from the Twelve or their disciples and on to a man named Saul. Luke actually references Saul twice in Acts before this chapter, identifying him in passing, first, as present at Stephen’s martyrdom [7:58] and then as an actor in the persecution of the church at Jersualem [8:3]. In fact, it is Saul’s actions against the church that provides the clearest picture that Luke is willing to give us as to what forms that persecution took. Saul, he writes, “laid waste to the church, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” [8:3].

One of two things is true about these attestations. Either the temple could convey the authority to punish (by beating, imprisonment, etc) those who strayed from orthodoxy or they could not, with mounds of evidence supporting both positions. Whole truth and nothing but the truth or not, Luke states this outright, insisting that:

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. [9:1,2]

Stephen’s stoning had seemed like a spontaneous event, though it began in a formal interrogation/trial setting. He was not stoned in the temple but dragged from it and stoned by an anonymous angry mob. The Gospels reiterate over and over that Jews lacked the authority to have a man put to death without Roman involvement. Yet, nowhere is Rome mentioned or implicated in this persecution. Now, we are invited to believe, the temple has the authority to beat and/or imprison whomever they like and can commission others to do this work for them.

Whatever his commission or motive, Saul set famously out on the road to Damascus where he had a very unexpected experience. Saul’s conversion on the road is so central to the Acts of the Apostles overall that the story is told twice, first in chapter nine and second, from Paul’s own lips in the twenty-second chapter. For the purpose of better understanding Luke’s vision of Paul, we’ll look at the two versions side-by-side, watching for additions or subtractions from the story.
In chapter nine, Luke writes:

Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and, suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city and you will be told what to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And, for three days, he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. [9:3-9]

There are five important elements to the story here: the light, the falling down, the voice, the acknowledgement of patronage, and the blindness. Note also that the men accompanying him positively hear the voice, positively do not see Jesus himself (or anyone else for that matter), but ambiguously do not see the light that blinds Paul.

In chapter twenty-two, Paul recounts his story to a group of Jews who, mere verses earlier, were trying to kill him.

“As I made my journey and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said unto me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ And when I could not see because of the brightness of the light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus.” [22:6-11]

All five of the fundamental story elements are perfectly intact from above and delivered in the same order. Light, falling down, voice, acknowledgement of patronage, blindness. But this time, the voice is now not perceived by those who traveled with Paul. Ideologically, this makes more sense because if men also commissioned to persecute Nazarene Jews heard an omniscient voice tell their boss to stop and go await further instructions, they would likely have either made a similarly famous conversion or just knifed him on the spot and gone on with their duties. The difference is subtle but important. In the first account, Paul’s experience with Jesus is a public one. While he alone is spoken to and blinded, all present hear what is said. In the account taken, presumably, from Paul’s own lips, that public miracle becomes a more private one, making his role in it second only to Jesus and, more importantly, making it difficult to prove or disprove since no one but Paul himself heard anything at all.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Two)

The first portion of this essay can be read here.

After the account of Peter and John’s first interrogation by the temple, the Acts of the Apostles offers a second glimpse into the early organizational structure of the early church. Luke, by this point, has already alluded once to the communal nature of the church, with members selling all of their worldly possessions and placing the proceeds into a pool to meet the needs of all who proclaimed the faith. If that point was already made, however, the urgency by which that arrangement was kept is clearly illustrated in the contrasting stories of Joseph and Ananias and Sapphira.

Joseph, a Cypriot from the tribe of Levi, is offered as an example of one who “sold a field which belonged to him, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” [4:37] and received, in return, the full support of the community and a fancy new nickname proclaiming his dedication. The fifth chapter of Acts, however, presents a darker side of this arrangement as, we are told, a believer named Ananias sold a piece of property and lied about the selling price in order to keep some of the money for himself. Peter was not amused.

Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. [5:1-5]

A few hours later, his wife, Sapphira is called in (not yet knowing her husband was already dead), repeats the lie and is similarly killed on the spot by God for her complicity. Luke does not shy away from the horror of the story as he describes Peter telling her, “Hark, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out” [5:9] in the moment before she dies. Read even within a confined context of just the book of the Acts, this represents a serious departure from nearly every miracle performed by Jesus, the Apostles or, in fact, any disciple in the remainder of the New Testament. It seems to imply that Peter, in addition to the power of healing, offering the forgiveness of sin, and facilitating the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (all in Jesus’s name) now possesses the ability to kill someone instantly, though, notably it is not Jesus but God and the Holy Spirit who are evoked in the act. Whatever Luke’s purpose for including this story in his Acts of the Apostles (be it even the fact that it happened exactly the way he describes), he can not be far from the truth when he writes at the end of the story that “great fear came upon the church and upon all who heard of these things” [5:12].

Peter and John continued their public ministry, gathering in Solomon’s Portico near the entrance of the temple and performing conspicuous miracles so, we are told, people began lining the sick up along the path so “that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them” [5:15]. Their fame among the people became too great for the temple authorities to ignore and so they were seized and thrown into prison. It is notable that Luke identifies in this passage (for the second time in the Acts of the Apostles), the Sadducees as responsible for the church’s persecution whereas the Pharisees had played the role of antagonist against Jesus. Their plans to frighten Peter and John with a stint in the pokey goes sour when “an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out” [5:19], proclaiming that they should go into the temple and teach. This indignation set off a second informal trial against Peter and John wherein they were accused of intending “to bring this man’s blood upon us” [5:28] through their teaching. Peter and John are portrayed as resolutely refusing to discontinue their ministry as they “must obey God rather than men” which infuriated the council. Luke writes that a Pharisee named Gamaliel, however, urged caution to the council in dealing with them and, in so doing, inadvertently reveals something important about the historical context in which the Nazarene sect existed.

And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you do with these men. For before these days, Theudas arose, giving himself out to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred joined him; but he was slain and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him; he also perished and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” [5:35-39]

While the relative merits of Jesus’s ministry on earth may be debated in contrast to that of Theudas or Judas of Galilee, what makes the early Christian movement unique, at least in Luke’s eyes, is its staying power beyond the removal (whether by death or by ascension) of its prime mover. In that sense, Jesus was indisputably (if metaphorically) resurrected as his message continued to harangue the temple authorities long after his disappearance from the city and, indeed, the Earth. Gamaliel’s argument for leniency also suggests to us that Jesus’s ministry of healing the sick and casting out demons was not created in a vacuum but was considered, at least by his critics, as belonging to a tradition of unregulated prophets who had always existed in the Jewish culture as a counterbalance to the legitimized corridors of religious and political authority. Swayed by Gamaliel’s warning, the council sufficed itself with giving the dynamic duo a vigorous beating and then released them again with the same warning to desist preaching and healing in Jesus’s name.

After this second visit to the council, the church underwent something of a transformation as the Twelve created a new hierarchy of disciples elected from the body of followers who had been converted since Jesus’s ascension. On the surface, this decision appears to have been motivated by sheer necessity as the Apostles complain that it “is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables” but what happens immediately after suggests that the church was drawing more attention (and thus more persecution) from the temple authorities and its leaders knew that they would have to abandon Jerusalem as the epicenter for their movement if they were to continue growing at the rate they had enjoyed thus far.

Among these elected “deacons” was Stephen, a man described in the Acts as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” who, in time began to work “great wonders and signs among the people” [6:5,8]. In response to Stephen’s growing fame, a number of the church’s detractors began a whisper campaign against Stephen until he was brought before the council for teaching that “Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place [the temple], and will change the customs which Moses delivered us” [6:14]. Stephen’s self-defense was radically different from Jesus’s as he delivers a short synopsis of the history of the Jewish people from the time of Abraham up through Solomon. Though renounced by Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, this passage lays the groundwork for a theological idea known as progressive revelation wherein it is suggested that God revealed his plan for humanity in stages; stages of which orthodox Judaism (as practiced in the 1st century) was nothing but a vestigial hold-over and Christianity, the most recent and presumably final iteration. Through most of his defense, Stephen embedded this idea into a conversation about the physical temple and its evolution from a tent in the wildness to the architectural wonder produced during Solomon’s reign, noting at the end that “the Most High does not dwell in houses made of hands” [7:48]. Then, he ditched the metaphor and went, instead, for the jugular.

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your father’s persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. [7:51-53]

As the council members seethed at the implication of his defense, Stephen took that moment to look upward and announce that he could see, at that moment, Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That, by Luke’s account, was all the abuse they could stand and “they cast him out of the city and stoned him” [7:58]. Considering what a big deal the council had made about not having the authority to sentence Jesus to death, we might assume that this stoning was implemented by extra-legal means by a mob not directly traceable back to the temple. One can also consider the possibility that executing a lesser-known man like Stephen may have presented less of a threat to their reputation among the people of the Jerusalem than silencing a recognized prophet and miracle worker.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part One)

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles
Author: Attributed to “Luke”

Place: City of origin difficult to absolutely pinpoint but touches on most of the Eastern Mediterranean at one point or another

Date written- Placed by different scholars in a period ranging from circa 60 CE to early in the 2nd century.

This essay will reference from the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.

It’s cruel, in a way, to read the Acts of the Apostles apart from the Gospel According to Luke to which it is usually tethered by virtue of sharing an author. The historical elements at the beginning of the Book of Acts line up more cleanly with the ending of Luke’s Gospel while the book, as a whole, continues building on themes that are uniquely Lukan and is richer for the connection. Still, if the work stands the test of time then it must do so on its own merits and, through the excavation of those singular qualities that belong to Acts alone, we may better appreciate the contribution that the author commonly thought of as Luke made to the canon of early Christian writing.

Jesus’s death, resurrection and ascension left early church fathers with something of a dilemma and the opening chapter of Acts addresses its two major components with startling precision. After his resurrection, Jesus spent forty days with his disciples in Jerusalem (unlike the Galilean setting that concludes the book of Matthew) in which, it is said, that he taught them about the kingdom of God that was to come. The common wisdom among Jews of the time was that the Messiah would come to unify them both culturally and militarily and, from that platform, they would retake their homeland that had been overseen by others for over four hundred years. How then, if Jesus had ascended to heaven, could he be the Messiah? Moreover, if Jesus’s intention was to show his divinity to the people of Israel, why did he leave the dissemination of his message in the hands of his followers instead of just taking it to the people himself, as he had done in his earthly ministry?

Luke’s author supplies both questions and most of the answers when he writes:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses…And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” [1:6-11]

The kingdom of heaven, then, was to arrive upon Jesus’s next return to Earth and, echoing Jesus’s preaching on the kingdom of heaven towards the end of the Gospel According to Matthew, the onus fell upon the believers to remain vigilant while accepting that not one among them might truly predict the hour of his return. The kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God, as Luke prefers) was something more profound than just the re-establishment of this dynasty or that dynasty to rule in the stead of the Greeks, Egyptians, Romans or whomever. His reasons for leaving this leg of the ministry in the hands of his “witnesses” rather than carrying the message himself remains somewhat hidden, though perhaps covered under the banner of the plan unfolding on God’s time rather than that of mortals.

Before carrying that ministry to the people in Jesus’s name (rather than his physical presence), the disciples drew lots to fill the position in the organization left open by Judas’s suicide, choosing Matthias who had “accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” and could serve like the others as “a witness to his resurrection” [1:21,22]. While this may seem like mundane housekeeping before the dinner party, the Jews had, when still in possession of their own political sovereignty, chosen their leader by lots. By specifying this method for the selection of a new peer, Luke seems to suggest that the Apostles were taking it back to the old school in defiance of monarchical or imperial methods of rule that had taken root in their culture.

Luke makes note of two basic promises that Jesus made before his ascension; first, that he would return and, second, in his absence, they would receive power from the Holy Spirit. They must have been impressed at the speed with which the second promise was fulfilled, for at the festival of Shavuot (celebrated forty-nine days after Passover to commemorate Moses’s reception of the Torah from God and also tied into harvesting traditions), they were made aware and then filled by the Holy Spirit. This momentous day in the history of the early church, known in the Christian tradition as Pentecost (translated literally, “the fiftieth day”) begins with a private miracle and concludes with a public one.

And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. [2:2-4]

Luke’s goes on to tell us that “devout men from every nation under heaven” lived in Jerusalem at that time and they all heard what the Apostles were saying in the own native tongue. In listing the nations of those who heard (Parthia, Medes, Elam, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Romans, Crete, and Arabia), Luke reveals something about the world these men occupied that is rarely discussed in the Gospels where the only three ethnic players mentioned are Jews, Romans, and Samaritans. In contrast, the disciples’ newfound ability to speak to men (and occasionally women) of many nations, whether fact or metaphor, foreshadows the universal nature of Christianity’s appeal.

Peter used this platform to outline clearly the first precepts of the early church. After proclaiming Jesus as the Christ as predicted by scripture, he bluntly stated that, “Let all the house of Israel know that assuredly God has made him [Jesus] both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you have crucified” [2:26]. So when Peter exhorted people to repent of their sins and ask forgiveness, at least in this context, it wasn’t penance for some nebulous original sin related to the Garden of Eden. It was for having crucified the very person God had sent to free them from slavery, both mental and physical. The only remedy, as far as Peter was concerned, was to “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” [2:28]. Though this baptism is the only prerequisite for salvation that Luke enunciates at the point in the book, a curious addendum on the end of chapter two provides a clearer glimpse after what happened after.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. [2:44-47]

This, in effect, was an amplification of Jesus’s own ministry except it remained in Jerusalem and, if Luke is to be taken at his word, soon resulted in a whole tribe of communally-nested followers of Christ who would attend the Temple en masse, perhaps to discourage discrimination from other sectarians. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that Peter and the others should run up against many of the same political factions that saw to Jesus’s crucifixion.

After Peter and John perform a conspicuous healing outside of the temple, they are brought before the religious authorities residing there to justify upon whose authority they were able to bring about this miracle. This is exactly the same concerns they had about Jesus, a magician of sorts who healed the sick and offered the forgiveness of sins outside of the brokered sacrifice and prayer for which the temple was responsible. Peter was obviously not trying to placate them when he proclaimed that, “this man has been healed…by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead” [4:10].

Faced with a miracle that they could not refute, The temple authorities were forced to let the Apostles go with a stern warning to “not speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” [4:18]. This commandment was, of course, ignored and only added to their zeal in spreading the message among, by Luke’s own account, men and women of every country who dwelt in Jerusalem.

Author Sketch: "Luke"

Author Sketch: “Luke”
Work Under Consideration: The Acts of the Apostles
Place: Unknown though likely suspects include Rome, Antioch, and Ephesus
Time: widely disputed, likely coordinates include before 60 CE, after 70 CE, and the 2nd century CE

Imagine, if you will, a continuum of authorial identity among early Christian writers that begins with Matthew and Mark, about whom we know very little, stretching through to Paul, about whom we know a great deal. Smack dab in the middle of that line is the author commonly known as Luke.

What we can absolutely verify about Luke is scant and derived from the texts that he (or she) left behind. Though our interest in Luke is focused on the Acts of the Apostles, it is widely assumed even among skeptics that the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the same person. Both books open with a direct address to someone named Theophilus (literally, “God-lover”) and share a number of unique theological concerns including the emergence of the Holy Spirit, the universal appeal of Jesus’s message of salvation beyond the borders of Palestine and the relationship of the early church to those on the social margins of the Roman imperial culture.

Early biblical apologists usually associated the author of Luke with Luke the Physician, a companion of Paul who is mentioned explicitly in at least three passages of the New Testament. Acts, in particular, dabbles with curious modulations between the first-person, the first-person plural and third-person reportage that gives the impression, at least, that what we are reading is an eye-witness account. If true, that would clearly date the book as having been written before 60 CE when it is accepted that Paul was taken to Rome for trial. Acts’ failure to report on either Paul’s summary execution or the destruction of the temple and, indeed, Jerusalem itself are given as secondary evidence to support this position. If Luke the Physician is, in fact, the same as Luke the Author, we still know almost nothing about him as the passages wherein he is mentioned identify him only as a companion to Paul who occupied some higher echelon in the early Gentile church.

Others, though, have noted Luke and Acts’ reliance on other historical works of the time (namely by the Roman Jewish writer Josephus) as evidence that they was written considerably later and that Acts, in particular, purposefully omits those two key events in history as a means of obscuring the date of its own creation. Both the Gospel of Luke and Acts seem to grapple with nuances surrounding Jesus’s divinity that were of greater concern to the Church after Paul’s death than during his life. The Acts of the Apostles also becomes decreasingly concerned with the Nazarene sect of Judaism (primarily composed of Jesus’s actual Apostles) and more concerned with Christianity as it spread beyond the borders of Palestine. This makes a strong argument for both Luke and Acts as documents generated by the Gentile church after the destruction of Jerusalem as a means of textually strengthening their direct connection to the source of the tradition.