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Who Is a Jew and Who Is a Gentile in the Book of Acts?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Extract

It has been now nearly a quarter century since W. C. van Unnik labelled the two-volume work to which we refer in abbreviated form as Luke–Acts as ‘a storm center in contemporary scholarship’. He referred in particular to the issues of redaction criticism, of the purpose of Acts, of the theological approach in Luke–Acts to the problem of the delay of the parousia, of the author's treatment of Paul, of the character and function of the speeches in Acts, and of whether it was proper to refer to the theological position of Luke–Acts as ‘early Catholic’ and therefore, in the minds of the German Lutheran theologians who were raising that question, as degraded, fallen from the early purity of Paul's Christianity, and unworthy of theological consideration today.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 ‘Luke–Acts, A Storm Center in Contemporary Scholarship’, Studies in Luke–Acts (ed. L. E. Keck and J. L. Martyn; 2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 1532.Google Scholar

2 The Acts of the Apostles. A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971)Google Scholar; ‘The Book of Acts as Source Material for the History of Early Christianity’, Studies in Luke–Acts, 258–78Google Scholar; ‘Judentum und Christentum in der Apostelgeschichte’, ZNW 54 (1963) 155–89.Google Scholar

3 Luke and the People of God. A New Look at Luke–Acts (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972) esp. 4174Google Scholar: ‘The Divided People of God. The Restoration of Israel and Salvation for the Gentiles’.

4 Brawley, Robert L., Luke–Acts and the Jews. Conflict, Apology, and Conciliation (SBLMS 33; Atlanta: Scholars).Google Scholar

5 Esler, Philip Francis, Community and Gospel in Luke–Acts. The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology (SNTSMS 57; Cambridge and elsewhere: Cambridge University).Google Scholar

6 London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress.

7 Cf. below, pp. 439–41.

8 Luke–Acts and the Jewish People. Eight Critical Perspectives (ed. J. B. Tyson; Minneapolis: Augsburg)Google Scholar. One should also note Tyson's own contribution to the debate, The Death of Jesus in Luke–Acts (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1986)Google Scholar, published late in that year.

9 Fitzmyer, Joseph A., Luke the Theologian. Aspects of His Teaching (New York and Mahwah: Paulist, 1989) 187–95Google Scholar. Cf. his The Gospel According to Luke (I–IX) (AB 28; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981) 179–92.Google Scholar

10 Talbert, Charles H., ‘Luke–Acts’, The New Testament and Its Modern Interpreters (ed. Epp, Eldon Jay and MacRae, George W.; Philadelphia: Fortress; Atlanta: Scholars, 1989) 303–4.Google Scholar

11 Moessner, David P., ‘The “Leaven of the Pharisees” and “This Generation”: Israel's Rejection of Jesus According to Luke’, Reimaging the Death of the Lukan Jesus (ed. Sylva, Dennis D.; BBB 73; Frankfurt/M.: Hain, 1990) 79107, 190–3Google Scholar, agrees that Luke–Acts presents ‘Israel as a whole’ (p. 105) as rejecting Christ and God's salvation; only Moessner has not quite got the Pharisees right. However, Evans, Craig A., ‘Is Luke's View of the Jewish Rejection of Jesus Anti-Semitic?’, Reimaging the Death of the Lukan Jesus, 2956, 174–83Google Scholar, goes over much of the evidence that I had discussed and tries to show that only some Jews are represented as being guilty. This cannot be discussed in detail here; one may note, e.g., Evans' proposal that the condemned emissaries in the parable of the Pounds are ‘only those who opposed the king’, not all Jews (p. 32). Evans also seeks to place the harsh anti-Jewish rhetoric in Luke–Acts into a broader context (pp. 39–49) and thus to divest it of significance. This approach has also been taken by Johnson, Luke T., ‘The New Testament's Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic’, JBL 108 (1989) 419–41.Google Scholar

12 Matera, Frank J., ‘Responsibility for the Death of Jesus According to the Acts of the Apostles’, JSNT 39 (1990) 7793Google Scholar, takes issue with my position and argues that only the Jerusalemites and their leaders bear that responsibility, according to Acts. In order to maintain this position, however, Matera has to propose that Acts 10.39–40 is merely ‘part of the missionary kerygma’, and that it should not be taken to mean what it says taken in isolation because ‘Peter is not telling [Cornelius and the other Palestinian God-fearers something new’ (p. 85). The case can happily rest on Acts 10.39.

13 Luke generally omits accounts of Jesus’ conflicts with Pharisees in his sources if those accounts do not concern halakic issues, and he introduces new conflicts that concern halakah. Cf. The Jews in Luke–Acts, 88–93.

14 Carroll, John T., ‘Luke's Portrayal of the Pharisees’, CBQ 50 (1988) 604–21Google Scholar, finds a progression of hostility where the Pharisees are concerned in Luke–Acts and argues that I have overlooked that because I have confused narrative and compositional setting. What Carroll seems to have overlooked, however, is that the only Pharisaic hostility in Acts comes from Christian Pharisees (with the exception of Paul, who presumably was not considered still a Pharisee), whereas non-Christian Pharisees are friendly toward Christianity.

15 Luke–Acts and the Jews, 84–106.

16 Luke–Acts and the Jews, 155–9, esp. 157.

17 Luke–Acts and the Jews, 156.

18 Luke–Acts and the Jews, 157.

19 Luke–Acts and the Jews, 78.

20 Luke–Acts and the Jews, 78–83.

21 Insider or Outsider? Luke's Relationship with Judaism’, Luke–Acts and the Jewish People, 76–82, 149–50; cf. esp. 79, 82.

22 ‘Insider or Outsider?’ 78, and n. 2. Salmon does not enumerate the older arguments advanced to support the Jewishness of the author of Acts: his interest in the Old Testament and its phraseology, his ‘Palestinian’ language, and Epiphanius's statement that he was Jewish; cf. the review of this opinion in Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (I–IX), 42. Fitzmyer apparently judges this opinion to be without merit and does not discuss it. He does argue, however – on the basis of other tradition and of Luke's apparent knowledge of early Antiochene Christian tradition – that the author of Acts was a Syrian originally from Antioch. That could be.

23 ‘Insider or Outsider?’, 79–80.

24 ‘The Disappearance of the “God-Fearers"’, Numen 28 (1981) 117Google Scholar. In addition to the literature cited here, a section of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 1986 discussed Kraabel's position, and a section of the Annual Meeting of the same society in November 1987 included a paper by Louis H. Feldman on the topic, with a response by Kraabel.

25 ‘Disappearance’.

26 Gager, John G., ‘Jews, Gentiles, and Synagogues in the Book of Acts’, HTR 79 (1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar =Christians among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl on His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. G. W. E. Nickelsburg with G. W. MacRae) 91–9Google Scholar. In the same volume Kraabel again cast doubt on the existence of the God-fearers; 147–57: ‘Greeks, Jews, and Lutherans in the Middle Half of Acts’. More recently, probably the best and certainly the most level-headed discussion of God-fearers has been given by Shaye Cohen, J. D., ‘Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew’, HTR 82 (1989) 1333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 BAR 12/5 (September-October 1986). The issue contained a ‘Feature: The God-Fearers - Did They Exist?’ that included the following contributions: ‘Introduction’, 44–5; Robert S. MacLennan and A. Thomas Kraabel, ‘The God-Fearers - A Literary and Theological Invention’, 46–53, 64; Robert F. Tannenbaum, ‘Jews and God-Fearers in the Holy City of Aphrodite’, 54–7; and Louis H. Feldman, ‘The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers’, 58–69.

28 Cf. Joyce Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Robert, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias. Greek Inscriptions with Commentary (Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume 12; Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 1987).Google Scholar

29 Feldman referred to two Jewish inscriptions from Aphrodisias, but he apparently was discussing only this one inscription, which covers two faces of the stele.

30 Cf. n. 28.

31 The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967).Google Scholar

32 Thus both Brawley and Esler have returned to the reconciliation theory of F. C. Baur, Esler with hardly a nod in that direction (cf. Community and Gospel, 136), but Brawley quite consciously. Brawley writes in his introduction (Luke–Acts and the Jews, 3) that Baur's ‘concern’ with ‘relationships between Jewish and gentile Christians’ was ‘overshadowed … until the Scandinavian Jacob Jervell revived them’; and Brawley then shows how recent scholarly discussion since Jervell has laid the ground for his own work (Luke–Acts and the Jews, 3–5).

33 ‘The Church of Jews and Godfearers’, Luke–Acts and the Jewish People, 11–20, 138–40.

34 ‘Church of Jews and Godfearers’, 11.

35 ‘Church of Jews and Godfearers’, 12–14.

36 ‘Church of Jews and Godfearers’, 15–16, 19–20.

37 Cf. Beker, J. Christiaan, Paul the Apostle. The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 91Google Scholar; Schmithals, Walter, Der Römerbrief als historisches Problem (SNT 9; Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1975) 1094Google Scholar, esp. 69–91.

38 A number of years ago, not long after I moved to Oregon, one of my colleagues in the classics department was reading the New Testament, not for the first time, and was puzzled by the phrase κατὰ πρόσωπον, ‘toward the face’, that appears several times in Luke–Acts. My colleague also knew Hebrew and wondered if this strange expression might simply be Jewish Greek and reflect the Hebrew idiom . I was able to tell him that he was quite correct and that in fact it was most likely an instance of the Septuagintalism often noted in the Greek of Luke–Acts. My colleague was so grateful for this information that he immediately bought a LXX and began to offer courses on the Greek of the LXX.

39 Cf., e.g., the discussion by Feldman, ‘Omnipresence of the God-Fearers’, 61–2.

40 A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus (ed. K. H. Rengstorf; 4 vols. + supplement; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 19731983).Google Scholar

41 The word προσἡλντος, incidentally, does not appear in Josephus.

42 Cited after Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism. A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 209Google Scholar. Cf., further to this point, Sanders’ discussion there on pp. 206–12, as well as Moore, George Foot, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era. The Age of the Tannaim (New York: Schocken Books, 1971) 1.323–53Google Scholar, and Urbach, Ephraim E., The Sages. Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979) 1.541–54.Google Scholar

43 Philo, , Life of Moses, 2.1723Google Scholar; Josephus, , Ant 20.2.34Google Scholar; AgAp 2.39.

44 Josephus, Ant 14.7.2 and 20.8.11.

45 Community and Gospel, 34–5.

46 ‘Insider or Outsider?’, 79.

47 I do not think, by the way, that I can prove that the author of Acts had read Paul's letters, but I consider it likely that he had at least heard parts of some of them read.

48 ‘Insider or Outsider’, 79.

49 Cf. further my essay, ‘The Prophetic Use of the Scriptures in Luke–Acts’, Early Jewish and Christian Exegesis. Studies in Memory of William Hugh Brownlee (ed. C. A. Evans and W. F. Stinespring; Scholars Press Homage Series; Atlanta: Scholars, 1987) 191–8.Google Scholar

50 The Jews in Luke–Acts, 88–93.

51 ‘Insider or Outsider?’, 79–80.

52 Der dreizehnte Zeuge. Traditions- und kompositionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Lukas’ Darstellung der Frühzeit des Paulus (FRLANT 103; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970) 176.Google Scholar

53 Salmon, ‘Insider or Outsider?’, 80.

54 JW 2.145. Cf. Haenchen, , Die Apostelgeschichte (MeyerK; 7th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977) 652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Most especially by Krenkel, Max, Josephus und Lukas: Der schriftstellerische Einfluβ des jüdischen Geschichtschreibers auf den christlichen nachgewiesen (Leipzig: H. Haessel, 1894)Google Scholar. Much of Krenkel's evidence was thin, however, and hardly compelling.

56 Cf. the introduction by Thackeray, H. St. J. in Josephus in Nine Volumes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University; London: William Heinemann, 1976) 2. xiiGoogle Scholar. Heinz Schreckenburg, who recognizes the possibility of interaction between Luke (and other early Christian writers) and Josephus, argues against any direct dependence; cf. his ‘Flavius Josephus und die lukanischen Schriften’, Wort in der Zeit; Neutestamentliche Studien. Festgabe für K. H. Rengstorf zum 75. Geburtstag (ed. W. Haubeck and M. Bachmann; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980) 179209.Google Scholar