DAY 79
CHALLENGE
“Acts isn’t reliable history. It was written long after the events.”
DEFENSE
The date that the book of Acts was written does not pose a problem for its historical reliability.
We observe elsewhere the general subject of Acts’ reliability (see Day 193). Raymond Brown proposed a late date for Luke and Acts of A.D. “85, give or take five to ten years” (An Introduction to the New Testament, 226, 280). If so, Acts would have been written approximately fifty- two years after the earliest events it describes and twenty-five years after the latest. All of that is within living memory. However, Acts was probably written earlier, for its narrative suddenly stops while Paul is under house arrest, awaiting trial before Nero.
Paul’s journey to Rome is a major theme in the book, set up as early as Acts 9:15–16. It comes into focus when Paul announces he must see Rome after visiting Jerusalem (Acts 18:21). He insists on going to Jerusalem, knowing he will be arrested (Acts 20:22–23, 21:10–14). When that occurs (Acts 21:33), the story of his journey to Rome takes over the narrative and dominates the last seven chapters of the book (one fourth of its twenty-eight chapters).
Yet it ends inconclusively, with Paul spending two years under house arrest, with no word of what happened at his trial. Given the amount of drama building up to the trial, this would make no sense if the result of Paul’s trial were known. If he was condemned, Luke would have the story of his glorious martyrdom, or of his innocent suffering on account of Christ, to record. If he was acquitted (as other sources suggest he was on this occasion), Luke would have recorded his glorious vindication.
The logical explanation for why the book includes neither of these is that the trial had not yet happened, and that tells us when Acts was published: two years after Paul’s Roman imprisonment began. Many scholars think Paul’s imprisonment began around A.D. 60, giving us a date of 62 for Acts. A stronger case, though, is that it began in 58, giving us a date of 60 for Acts (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., and Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul).
TIP
For more on the dating of Acts, see John A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament.