Saturday 14th March 2020 Devotion
Scripture:- Acts 20
Topic:- Who Wrote the Book of Acts
Text:- Acts 21:4
According to Church tradition, Luke wrote the book of Acts. If he did, the book is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke.
A. Evidence within Acts supports authorship by Luke:
1. Just as his Gospel opens with a dedication to Theophilus, so also does Acts.
2. Vocabulary and style are very similar in the two books.
3. Though it does not prove that he wrote Luke-Acts, frequent use of Medical terms agrees with Luke’s being a Physician.
4. By his use of “we” in narrating parts of Paul’s journeys, the author of Acts implies that he was a traveling companion of Paul.
5. Other traveling companions do not fit the data of the text. For example, Timothy and several lesser-known ones are mentioned apart from the “we” and “us” of Acts 20:4-6.
6. According to Paul’s letters, neither Titus nor Silas (still other traveling companions unmentioned in Acts 20:4-6, accompanied him to Rome or stayed with him there. Yet the narrative of his voyage to Rome makes up one of the “we”-sections.
7. By such processes of elimination Luke remains the only likely candidate for the authorship of Acts.
B. Clues from the author’s literary technique:
1. Together with the Gospel of Luke and the Letter to the Hebrews, the book of Acts contains some of the most cultured Greek writing in the New Testament.
2. On the other hand, roughness of Greek style turns up where Luke appears to be following Semitic sources or imitating the Septuagint.
3. Some scholars regard the speeches and sermons in Acts as literary devices improvised by Luke himself to fill out his stories.
4. That some ancient historians followed such a practice is true, but not to the extent that has sometimes been claimed.
5. Although Luke need not have given verbatim reports of speeches and sermons, it does seem that he accurately gives the gist of what was said. Support for such accuracy comes from striking parallels of expression between Peter’s sermons in Acts and 1 Peter and between Paul’s sermons in Acts and his letters.
6. These parallels can hardly have arisen by chance; and no other evidence exists to indicate that Luke imitated or used in any other way the letters, or that Peter and Paul imitated Acts when writing their letters. The only adequate explanation: Luke did not make up the speeches and sermons, but summarized their contents so accurately that the characteristic phraseology of Peter and Paul is evident in Luke’s reporting as well as in their letters.
C.What was the source used to write Acts:
1. For the material in Acts, Luke drew on his own recollections where possible. He may have put some of these in a diary at the time of the events.
2. Doubtless, additional information came to him from Paul, from Christians in Jerusalem, Syrian Antioch, and other places that he visited with and without Paul, from other traveling companions of Paul, such as Silas and Timothy, and from Philip the Deacon and Evangelist and an early Disciple named Mnason, in whose homes he stayed. Acts 21:8,16.
3. Also available were written sources, such as the decree of the Jerusalem Council, Acts 15:23-29 and perhaps Aramaic or Hebrew documents relating the early events of Christianity in and around Jerusalem.
D. Is Luke’s account historically accurate:
1. To a large degree, archaeological discoveries have supported Luke’s historical accuracy. For example, we now know that his use of titles for various kinds of local and provincial government officials—procurators, consuls, praetors, politarchs, Asiarchs, and others—was exactly correct for the times and localities about which he was writing.
2. This accuracy is doubly remarkable in that the use of these terms was in a constant state of flux because the political status of various communities was constantly changing.
E. Why did Luke stop writing so suddenly:
1. The book of Acts ends abruptly. Luke brings the story of Paul to the point where Paul, imprisoned in Rome, has been waiting for two years to be tried before Caesar.
2. But we read no more. What happened to Paul? Did he ever appear before Caesar? If so, was he condemned? Martyred? Acquitted? Released? Luke does not tell us.
3. Many suggestions are offered to explain the abruptness of this ending, but they are all speculation, and they all have holes: Perhaps Luke intended a third volume that would answer the lingering questions. But his first volume, the Gospel of Luke, closes with a sense of completeness even though he probably intended already to write Acts.
4. Personal catastrophe may have prevented Luke from finishing the book. That Paul was martyred in Rome. But those passages set out the possibility of martyrdom at the hands of hostile Jews in Jerusalem, not at the hands of Caesar in Rome.
Prayer Point:- Oh Lord God, make me indeed Your vessel, in the name of Jesus Christ.
Have A Blessed Saturday!
