Jul 19, 2008

Forthcoming Volume on the Book of Acts


Michael Bird has noted that there is a soon to be published
book on Acts about reading Acts from a second century perspective. I m not sure how well this premise is going to work since I am fairly confident that Acts was written in the first century.

4 comments:

Cal Habig said...

But Charles, if you read the description of the book, it notes that the book sets aside the question of when Acts was written. Instead it focuses on how the second century church SAW the book of Acts. There would seem to me to be a great deal of benefit in seeing how those who were just a step removed from the writing of the book interpreted and applied it. It would seem to be that it would give tremendous insight into the thinking of the early church leaders in the first century. We just don't have texts and commentaries on Acts from the first century. Would be nice...but they don't exist. And so to take the comments, etc from second century leaders would seem to give us greater insight into how the early church actually saw and applied these texts. It sure beats much of the 20th & 21st century interpretation I have seen of Acts!

Charles Savelle said...

Cal,

You are right to a point, but the description of the book and some of the chapter titles reflect a bit more ambiguity. Take the sentence in the blurb that reads, "This volume brings together essays by scholars in various sub-disciplines of early Christian studies, with the aim of situating the Acts of the Apostles in the second century." A key term here is "situating." Note also the title of chapter three, "Jerusalem Destroyed: The Unacknowledged Setting of the Readers of Acts." This title would seem to suggest at the very least a post A.D. 70 date for the writing of Acts. Similarly, chapter one's title "Reading Backwards from the Beginning: Acts of the Second Century and Christian Origin Studies," is ambiguous. What does the author mean by the "Acts of the second century"? While I share your hope in the possible fruit that such a novel approach might reap, I wonder if it is altogether helpful to read a book in light of a context that is different than the original context. I suspect that what will actually happen is that Acts will be interpreted in light of the second century and not the second century in light of Acts. I am not sure how such an approach works in the context of a grammatical-historical hermeneutic.
I might add that if one is interested in what the early church thought about Acts, the church fathers are available and one could also turn to the volume on Acts in the Ancient Christian Commentary Series published by IVP.

Cal Habig said...

Thanks for the comments. I haven't seen the volume and the TOC, etc. I do with that the Ancient Commentary Series had a volume on Acts, but it has not yet been published.

Charles Savelle said...

Although I don't own it, the IVP website shows that the volume on Acts was published in 2006. See http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=1490/look=accs.html