It began in Jerusalem. That is the first clear message which Luke wants his readers to understand. That is why he locates the first obvious section of his narrative (chs 1–5) entirely in Jerusalem. Equally deliberate will be his ending of his narrative in Rome (Ch. 28). For his whole account hangs between these two poles, and the character of his narrative is shaped by this tension.
The very identity of his subject matter is determined by the same tension between beginning and goal. What is the ‘it’ which began in Jerusalem? (1) We today want most naturally to answer, ‘Christianity’, and to label Luke’s account as ‘the first history of Christianity’. And indeed, so it is. But it is not a history as we understand history, as we have already observed (Introduction §4) and as we will have plenty of occasion to confirm. More to the point, such a title is anachronistic. That is to say, to use the term ‘Christianity’ at this stage is historically inaccurate. Properly speaking, ‘Christianity’ did not yet exist. The term ‘Christians’ was first coined some way into Luke’s story (11.26; 26.28; cf. I Peter 4.16), and the term ‘Christianity’ itself first appears in our sources in the 110s (by Ignatius, Magnesians 10.1–3; Romans 3.3; Philadelphians 6.1) — that is, some eighty years after the events narrated by Luke in chs 1–5 here. The term is important as indicating the extent to which the identity of the new movement was bound up with ‘Christ’, but that simply confirms emphases made by Luke by other means from the first (see on 1.1 and Introduction §5(2)).
If we are to let our description be determined by Luke’s preferred terms we could speak of the history of (2) ‘the church’, so long as we appreciate that by ‘the church’ Luke always means the assembly (cf. 19.32, 39, 41) or community of believers in a particular place — in Jerusalem (e.g. 5.11; 12.1; 15.4, 22; 18.22), or in Antioch (13.1; 15.3), or in Ephesus (20.17), or, once, in a region, ‘the whole of Judaea’ (9.31). Notable here is the fact that Luke also includes reference to ‘the church/assembly (of Israel) in the wilderness’ (7.38). (3) Another term which sums up identity in a single action and attitude is ‘the believers’ (see on 2.44). Luke also occasionally speaks of ‘the faith’ (13.8; 14.22; 16.5), but in each case a better translation is ‘their (or his) faith’. (4) ‘The disciples’ first appears in Ch. 6 (see on 6.1).
(5) Alternatively, if we limit ourselves to terms actually used at the time, within the narrative itself, rather than by Luke as narrator, we would have to speak of the beginning of ‘the way’ (8.36; 9.2; 19.9, 23; 22.4; 24.14, 22), that is, the way of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. 18.25–26; see also on 9.2), or (6) of ‘the sect of the Nazarenes’ (24.5, 14; 28.22). This is a reminder that, in Jewish eyes at least, the new movement centring on the name of the Nazarene (see on 4.10) was simply another sect, like the ‘sects’ of the Sadducees or the Pharisees (cf. 5.17; 15.5; 26.5). Which is also to say that at this beginning stage we are not yet talking of a new religion, far less a religion sprung full grown into existence at the first Christian Easter or Pentecost. We are talking rather of a movement within the first-century Judaism of the land of Israel, a messianic movement (Jews who were followers of the way of Jesus of Nazareth), indeed, from Christian perspective at least, a renewal movement, whose potential for renewal within the religion of Israel has never been fully realized. (7) Similar conclusions can be drawn from Luke’s use of the title ‘the saints’ (see on 9.13). (8) A related term is ‘brothers’; but see on 1.15.
‘Beginning in Jerusalem’, therefore, describes not simply a geographical location. It is also a theological description. It indicates that the identity of the movement whose beginnings Luke now sets out to relate was and remains largely determined by those beginnings. Even when the movement has made its ironically triumphant entry into the capital of the civilized world (Rome), it is still ‘the hope of Israel’ (28.20) which is at stake. The historical narrative which follows this opening tells of a geographical expansion of that movement. The underlying theological narrative, however, is of how that ‘hope of Israel’ was re-expressed, how the identity of the Jewish way of Jesus was opened and enlarged to embrace the wider world of the Gentiles. The tension thus set up between Jerusalem and Rome, between beginning and goal, becomes the theological drama which underlies the more surface drama of expansion and rejection, of bold proclamation, persecution and shipwreck.