Seminar on the Acts of the Apostles
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The Acts Seminar has set itself the task of going
through the canonical Acts of the Apostles from beginning to end and evaluating it for historical accuracy. The goal is to produce a red letter edition of Acts, following the publication model used by
the Jesus Seminar in The Five Gospels and The Acts of Jesus<
. With such a
tool in hand, students of the Bible will be better able to address issues of Christian origins. Acts is, of course, the first and most successful attempt to tell the story of
Christian origins. It is a story so well-told that it has dominated Christian self-understanding down to the present day. Yet today the historicity of much
of the story Acts tells can be challenged. Part of that challenge derives from a new awareness of the complex diversity of Christian origins – the story in Acts
simply cannot successfully account for that diversity. But the most significant challenge to Acts' story of Christian origins derives from a critical study of
Acts itself. Today we know that Acts is a work of imaginative religious literature exhibiting the characteristics of other such literature of its day. When
critically examined, it is unable to support the high level of trust that Christian interpreters have traditionally placed in the accuracy of its story.
The issues involved in assessing the reliability of Acts that have emerged for the Seminar can be summarized under four broad categories. The first category of
assessment is genre. Acts has often been subsumed under the genre of history, which in turn has tended to support a positive assessment of its reliability. But
more recent research has noted the close relationship between Acts of the Apostles, and other non-canonical acts of apostles in early Christian literature,
with the genre of the ancient novel. This new assessment means that Acts must be taken seriously as a work of imaginative literature.
This is supported by the second category of analysis, namely, the theology and purpose of Luke-Acts. Gospel research now takes for granted that theological
purposes underlie the stories told by each of the gospels. The Acts of the Apostles clearly follows a theological agenda as well, and that agenda must be
taken into account in assessing the historical reliability of Acts. The third category of analysis regards the sources of Acts. In the case of the
Gospel of Luke, we have access to the primary sources used, namely Mark and Q, and can thus evaluate how the author used his sources. Clearly there
must have been sources used in the writing of Acts, but there is no agreement on what they are. The fourth category for assessing Acts takes the source question one step
further. Even if a source can be identified behind a story in Acts, on what basis are we to judge its relative historicity? This issue is often skirted in scholarship,
so that the identification of a source often seems to be accompanied by the presumption that it must therefore be historical. The Acts Seminar will take a
rigorous stand on this issue and, in every instance, will question the grounds for making a claim of historicity. We hope thereby to produce a more consistent set of criteria for defining history in Acts. The Acts Seminar is a project of significant importance for the study of early Christianity. Not only will we be engaged in redefining our understanding of
this important document of the early church and the historical setting in which it was written. We will also be raising questions about our basic understanding of
Christian origins, an understanding that for too long has been dominated by an uncritical reading of Acts. In short, we will be laying the groundwork for a
complete reassessment of how Christianity began. We look forward to exciting discussions to come, and we invite others of our colleagues who are engaged in the study of Acts to join us.
Reports
The Acts Seminar meets twice annually. Reports from the seminar appear in Westar's membership magazine, The Fourth R. Click on the following links for PDFs of published reports to date:
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