Preliminary Information on the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.

Content and purpose. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, like the second book of the Gospel of Luke, contains a continuation of the Gospel historical narratives about the work of Christ. But it tells of the story of Christ, no longer on earth, but after his ascension seated at the right hand of God, tells of the founding of the Christian Church by the Apostles, first among the Jews, then among the Gentiles: in other words, it depicts with exact sequence the spread of the Church from Jerusalem, the chief city of the Jewish people and the Jewish Church, through Antioch, the cradle of the Church of the Gentiles, to Rome, the chief city of the Gentile world and the Church of the Gentiles. and thus, following step by step the historical movement of Christianity to the West, it represents the transition of the kingdom of God, with its promises and salvation, from the Jews to the Gentiles. The first seeds of the Church both among Jews and among Gentiles were sown by the Apostle Peter. But the planting and growth of the church among the pagans was especially facilitated by the great apostolic labors of Paul, who was called to the apostleship in an extraordinary way. Accordingly, the book consists of two main parts. In the first, chapters 1-12, the apostolic activity of Peter is narrated, namely: chapters 1-7 speak of the Church of the Jews, and chapters 8-12 depict the transition of the Church from Jews to Gentiles. The second part, chapters 13-18, tells about the activity of Paul and about the Church of the Gentiles, about the founding of Christian societies from the Gentiles in Syria, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Rome. In the book of Acts it is set forth thus: how the little society of Jesus, in accordance with His promises, led by Himself, in a spirit of faith and love, became a witness of the truth about Jesus before the world; how later the pagan world, together with these firstfruits of believers, began to form one flock under the rule of the One Shepherd, and thus, speaking to Paul (Rom. 1:16)

Thus the history of the Church, as handed down in the canonical books of the New Testament, ends. The description of the struggle which the militant Church must wage uninterruptedly with its enemies, until its final triumph, is already left to the annals of men. The book itself depicts only the beginnings of what continues and is revealed in the Church even to this day.

From this content of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, its purpose is also revealed. The book depicts the history of the initial foundation of the Church between Jews and Gentiles, the transition of the New Testament kingdom of God from the former to the last, from Jerusalem to Rome. Thus, Luke in the Acts of the Apostles wanted to tell from the history of the initial spread and development of Christianity in the Jewish and pagan worlds, and from the activities of Peter, and then mainly Paul, who contributed to this, what from this point of view seemed to him to be especially important, and he was partly an eyewitness of what was described, and partly had accurate information from others. In recent times, however, attempts have been made to prove that in the Acts of the Apostles there are special "tendencies" that lie beyond the direct purpose, namely, to say nothing of obviously untenable assumptions, either general or particular. According to some Luke had the general purpose of depicting that the Gentiles are called to participate in the kingdom of the Messiah on an equal footing with the Jews, and that Christianity manifests its activity among the Gentiles as powerfully as it is in the Jews, and that, consequently, Luke had the purpose of justifying the conduct of Paul, namely, that the Gentiles should not be compelled to observe the ceremonial law, as they should be, by virtue of their faith in Christ, the same right to participate in the blessedness of the kingdom of God belongs to the Jews. But if the content of the book of Acts is somewhat so, it seems to correspond to this purpose; then, on the other hand, such a goal is in contradiction with the whole content of the book of Acts, some do not coincide with such a goal, others correspond to such a goal, it would be necessary to add, which, however, is known only from the Pauline Epistles. Obviously, in this case, the point of view of the book was hastily confused with its purpose. — According to another, much more untenable, opinion, the writer of the Book of Acts had a private goal — namely, to depict the Apostle Paul in such a way that all the exclamations of the Jews known to us from the Pauline Epistles against Paul, against his apostolic dignity and activity, would be refuted from the point of view of the Judaizers themselves; in other words (as the followers of the New Tübingen school say), to reconcile Peter's party with Paul's, showing Peter's agreement with Paul, Peter, contrary to history, is represented with the direction of the Gentile Christians, as Paul, and Paul with the direction of the Jewish Christians, as Peter. But to say nothing of the inconsistency and lack of evidence of opinion (which, however, lies at the basis of the supposed purpose, the intermediary between Peter and Paul), which transfers the hostile divisions of the one-sided parties, Judaizer and pagan, to the Apostles themselves, — first, the image of Paul, as it appears in his own Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, recognized as authentic by the Baur school itself, does not in the least contradict the image of him inscribed in the book of Acts, but, on the contrary, they contain indications that find their interpretation only in Acts. Secondly, this whole hypothesis makes a vain accusation against the book of Acts of artificiality and premeditation, whereas its striking simplicity speaks loudly against it. Finally, needless to say, in the assumption of such an aim, under the mild expression "apologetic and conciliatory tendency" there is concealed the accusation of a distortion and distortion of historical facts as crudely as it is arbitrary and unfounded, and consequently of the destruction of history, for the characters in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, in this case, appear not only to be devoid of any divine assistance, like the common people. but also appear as leaders of parties, succumbing to their personal passion.

The Book of Acts constitutes the necessary connection between the Gospels and the Apostolic Epistles and depicts historically the appearance of the Church in the world and the way in which it was received by the world.

Time and place of writing. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles ends with the legend of Paul's imprisonment and unhindered activity in Rome, which included his apostolic movement from the center of Judaism and the Church of the Jews to the center of paganism and the Church of the Gentiles; consequently, the book ends in the second year of Paul's imprisonment (Acts 28:30 ff.), since there is no mention of his release or death. Probably, the book was written at this time. It was thought, however, that the book of the Acts of the Apostles was not finished. But the arbitrariness of such an assumption is obvious; for the Gospel of Luke also ends similarly to the end of the Book of Acts in its very form. Nor is there any reason to believe that the book ends there precisely because it was written at that time. The reason for this is that Paul's work in the world was over at that time, and thus the writer's main goal was achieved – the depiction of the spread of the Church from Jerusalem to the borders of Rome.

If during Paul's imprisonment in Rome, Luke himself was there (Acts 28:13-16, Col. 4:24, Phil. 24), then Jerome's conclusion that Rome is the place where the book of the Acts of the Apostles was written is not unfounded. But since Luke was hardly there all the time with Paul, the undoubted correctness of such a conclusion remains undecided.

It is more difficult than the time of the writing of the book of the Acts of the Apostles to determine the time of each historical event mentioned in it, and the chronology of the book of Acts presents many difficulties. Attempts have long been made to establish it, and attention has been drawn to the following points as the main and historically more definite: the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:59ff.), the conversion of Paul (9:1ff.; cf. 12:2ff., and Gal.2:1), the death of Herod Agrippa (12:20ff.), the famine in Palestine (11:28ff.), 25), the proconsulship of Sergius Paul in Cyprus (13, 7), the expulsion of the Jews from Rome (18, 2), the proconsulship of Gallio in Corinth (18, 12), the procuratorship in Judea of Felix (23, 24 and 24, 10), and after him Festus. According to these events, the chronology of the book of the Acts of the Apostles was established in various ways. All the positive and negative results in this respect have recently been critically analysed, partly by Unger and partly by Wiesler. The unsubstantiated denials of the New Tübingen school in the face of the results of the latter are insignificant.

Authenticity. As for the authenticity of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, its writer often points to himself as a companion of the Apostle Paul and an eyewitness (part) of the events he describes (16:10-17; 20:5-1.5; 21:1-17; 27:1-28, 16). With these indications, which impartial and thorough criticism must recognize as obviously belonging to Luke himself and on the basis of them conclude about everything else, agree with the internal signs contained in the book of Acts: an exact knowledge of the time and circumstances described, the naturalness and truth of the character of the speakers and actors, independence from dogmatic prejudices; this is also confirmed by the clear voice of historical tradition.

As early as the second half of the 2nd century, Irenaeus, in the Epistle of the Lyons and Vienna Churches to the Asians and Phrygians, relating to the second half of the 2nd century, in Tertullian, in Clement Alex., in the ancient, so-called Muratorian Canon, in the ancient Syrian Peshito, in Origen, in Eusebius himself, who directly considers the Acts of the Apostles to be the generally recognized canonical scripture of Luke, and in all ecclesiastical writers Luke is called the writer of the Book of Acts (according to Phil. 24; Col. 4:14; and 2 Tim. 4:11, a faithful companion of Paul), and his writings are recognized by all as canonical. That the book of Acts, attributed to Luke, Paul's co-worker, and not to Paul himself, was from such an early time and indisputably recognized as canonical, is explained (apart from the content of the book itself) by the fact that the first part of Luke's great work, the Gospel, was recognized as authentic and canonical, according to tradition about Paul's participation in it. The same meaning, and for the same reason, naturally had to extend to another part of Luke's great work, the Acts of the Apostles, especially since in this book it is impossible not to notice Paul's influence.

But it was not from the second half of the second century that the Church began to know about the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Still earlier allusions and references to it are more likely to be found not only in Tatian, but even in Justin, and even more clearly in Polycarp and Ignatius. Of course, the early references to the book of the Acts of the Apostles are not fully definite, and in general in the very first times of Christianity it is referred to less often and less definitely than to all the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. But, firstly, the ancient references to the Gospels are for the most part not exact quotations, but only references. Later, the Book of Acts, originally written for the private man Theophilus (Acts 1:1), could not have spread everywhere in such a short time as the apostolic writings were distributed, addressed to entire Christian communities. Finally, its content, however important and sublime in itself, aroused less the need for Christians to read it. For this reason, in comparison with the content of the Gospels and most of the Pauline Epistles, there seemed to be less incentive to quote it in apologetic-dogmatic works, which were most prominent in the early Christian times.

And the book of the Acts of the Apostles, like all the New Testament writings, had in the early Church a kind of enemies, namely the Marcionites, who, according to the basic principles of their sect, had to be against everything that is said in the Acts of the Apostles about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, about Paul's adherence to the Jewish rite, etc., and who in this case, instead of in order to distort the book, as they had done with the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles, they preferred the easier means of rejecting it outright. Further, the Manichaeans, whose criticism was generally the most arbitrary, must have been hostile to the book of Acts, if only because of their hostility to the Old Testament. Then the Ebionites very naturally became irreconcilable enemies of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, as irreconcilable enemies of Paul's teaching about the participation of pagans in the kingdom of the Messiah by faith and enemies of Paul himself. Finally, the one-sided asceticism of the Severians similarly made them opponents of the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Apostolic Acts. The denial by these opponents of the authenticity of the book of Acts was evidently based on their preconceived dogmatic opinions and principles, and therefore has no force or significance at all, just like the recent attacks on it raised by the Baur school, which is based on a preconceived opinion (the falsehood of which is evident from the book of Acts itself) about the irreconcilable opposition between the Petrine and Pauline trends in the Apostolic Age. opinion on which the whole false view of this school is based.

If, moreover, some other critics of modern times, like de Wette and others, put forward internal reasons for doubting the authenticity of the book of the Acts of the Apostles; then the one-sided subjectivity of their views is visible at first glance. The miraculousness, which is necessary in the history of the foundation and discovery of such an institution as the Christian Church (the only one in the world and in its essence standing above the world), and the supernatural mystery so natural, seems to these opponents in the story of the Book of Acts a myth or an indefinite and unsettled folk tale, which, by its very miraculousness (allegedly), is suspicious, improbable, and incompatible with the opinion of the authenticity of the book. In this case, exegetical difficulties are declared without further reasoning for incorrect indications, historical difficulties —