Category: New Testament

5. Use of Paul’s Letters in Acts

The following hyperlinked notes (continued from Tyson) outline evidence from Knox, O’Neill, Enslin, Walker, Leppa, Aejmelaeus, Goulder and Pervo for collectively “mounting a serious counterargument” that the author of Acts knew and used Paul’s letters. Continue reading “Dating the Book of Acts: 6, the late date reconsidered (5. Paul’s letters)”

Tyson has presented the selective summary of views on the date of Acts (outlined in previous 3 posts) to bring to readers’ attention the fact that the current majority view for the intermediate date for Acts (80-100 c.e.) has not always held the floor. He believes recent scholarship in a number of fields invites us to re-open the question of the second-century date for Acts, even though it has not been widely entertained now for 100 years. Tyson sees five issues as significant for this reconsideration of a late date for Acts:

1. External references to Acts
2. Significance of the events of 70 c.e.
3. Bearing of the end of Acts
4. Possible influence of Josephus on Acts
5. Use of Paul’s letters by the author of Acts

Again, the notes here are from Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (2006) pp. 10-23 . . . . . Continue reading “Dating the Book of Acts: 4, the late date reconsidered (1-3)”

Baur argued that Acts was written in the mid second century, around 140-150 C.E.

Baur saw Acts as an attempt to heal a rift in Christianity between two factions originally led by Peter and Paul. Christianity in Baur’s view had been divided between Jewish Christians who saw Jesus as the hope of their historical expectations, who held to the Torah and allowed gentiles into their ranks if they adhered to the Torah too, on the one hand, and gentile Christians on the other, who taught salvation by faith in Jesus only, and dismissed the Torah as ineffective for salvation.

Baur was influenced by the work of his student, Schneckenburger, who demonstrated extensive parallels between Peter and Paul in Acts. They both: Continue reading “Dating the Book of Acts: 3, Evidence for the late date (Baur)”

In 1897 Harnack’s Chronologie was published. This raised, with respect to the date of Acts, the issues still addressed today:

The evidence of the conclusion of Acts (Chronologie) Continue reading “Dating the Book of Acts: 2, Evidence for an intermediate date (80-100 c.e.)”

This is a short list points I have distilled from Tyson’s Marcion and Luke-Acts . This section will summarize the evidence adduced for an early date for the composition of Acts (pre-70 C.E. — before or around the trial and execution of Paul and the fall of Jerusalem) and the arguments against the interpretation of this evidence.

Future posts will look at evidence for:

• an “intermediate” date (usually around the last couple of decades of the first century/very early second century);
• and for a late date (well into the second century C.E. — even possibly as late as the mid or latter half of the second century C.E.) Continue reading “Dating the Book of Acts: 1, Evidence for the early date (before 70 c.e.)”