Traditionally, there was little dispute among New Testament interpreters that the author of Acts was a historian by intention, making Acts the only intentionally historical writing in the New Testament (Conzelmann, xl). As historical-critical perspectives have developed, however, the discussion has become more nuanced. After acknowledging that Luke intended to write a historical narrative, scholars have asked whether he was a good or bad historian (Johnson, 190). Acts has been severely criticized regarding its historical value and accuracy, a dispute that not long ago made it “the storm centre of modern New Testament study” (Marshall, 13, after Unnik). The first criticisms of the historicity of Acts arose from the mid-nineteenth-century Tübingen school, led by Ferdinand Christian Baur, whose stated singular purpose in investigating the New Testament was to “comprehend the historically given in its pure objectivity as far as it is generally possible” (Baur, vi–viii). This new emphasis on “historicity” and historical “objectivity” (though in some tension with Hegel’s dialectical philosophy of history) led members of the Tübingen School to assert that Acts was merely a piece of Christian propaganda literature, written in the early second century and entirely unreliable as a historical document (see Munck, lv). This assessment has been reasserted among some contemporary scholars: for example, Gerd Lüdemann wrote that the “straight-line” arrangement of the narrative “clearly oversimplifies the actual order of events,” and so “cannot furnish the basis for a valid history of early first-century Christianity” (Lüdemann 2008, 71; 2005). It is perhaps more appropriate, Lüdemann asserts, to view Acts as a combination of both historical fact and historical fiction (Lüdemann 2008, 65). Acts may not be completely unreliable—it appears to have embedded within it traditions that may contain a kernel of historical fact—but each episode must be critically evaluated to ascertain the historical value of the traditions behind it.
Other interpreters have emphasized the entertaining aspect of Acts and classified it among the historical novels of antiquity (Pervo 1987, 11, 137–38); Howard Clark Kee describes it as a “novelistic drama” (Kee, 1). This designation further blurs the characterization of Acts as history because the measure of a genre’s entertainment value does not allow us to distinguish works of ancient history from ancient novels. As Emilio Gabba notes in this regard, “in the same climate of paradoxographical literature the ‘novel’ is born and develops; the novel in antiquity is in fact a form of history” (Gabba, 15). While accuracy, objectivity, and critical assessment are expected today of the modern historian—“accuracy about the facts together with some accurate, and as far as possible objective, assessment about what the facts signify; in other words, some interpretation of what happened, in the economic and social as well as the political and military spheres” (Grant, 2)—ancient principles of historiography were different. To be sure, in antiquity, the craft of writing history also dealt with events regarded as important and noteworthy. But “ancient history was written according to principles, interests, aims, and tastes of great diversity. Works of history in antiquity were composed according to its intended audience, and different types of history aimed at different readers, had different aims, were composed according to different principles” (Gabba, 3). Ancient historiography, therefore, should not be understood according our contemporary sense of factual reporting, but as “literary artistry,” because the first duty of any historian was to be an artist. In Lucian’s opinion (120–180 CE), a good historian had to have “powers of expression” (On Writing History 34). In short, then, an ancient historian had to weave stories that would, first and foremost, entertain, and for this purpose, historical precision and detailed accuracy were secondary, if not totally disregarded. Even if we measure Acts against the standard of ancient historiography as found, for example, in the works of Thucydides (460–400 BCE)—whose survey of causes and effects, goal of impartiality in securing and evaluating evidence from both sides of an issue, and rigorous accuracy of detail in separating truth from falsehood established ancient scientific standards (though these were not maintained by his successors: “in the end, the demands of artistry gained precedence over those of science” [Grant, 8, 95]) and constitute perhaps the closest approximation to the contemporary ideal of history-writing—Acts suffers in the comparison, for it lacks some of the basic characteristics of a historical work as found in Thucydides. Some scholars have therefore asserted that Acts is not historical, and that its author is not the first Christian historian (Kümmel, 161–62).
Some scholars have asked whether the question of genre would be resolved if the entire literary project of Luke-Acts were considered and assessed together (Rothschild; Ehrman, 155). Attempts to classify the literary genre of Luke-Acts have included “theological history” (Maddox, 16), “apologetic historiography” (Sterling, 374; Doughty), and Greco-Roman biography, composed of an admixture of two subtypes (Talbert, 134). But since the two writings are structured and organized quite differently, as was recognized early on in the ecclesial tradition that treated and placed them separately, efforts to categorize the conjoined work have not proved generally convincing.
It is nevertheless commonly recognized that the book of Acts is concerned, in organization and intention, with a sequential development of the early Christian movement and with recounting the deeds of important figures in that development. The narrative is set within a chronological framework that begins with the origin of the movement, noting its spread and development using “synchronisms” (DeSilva, 349)—that is, attempts to correlate an event with different methods of dating; for example, the reigns of kings, the tenure of governors, or the Jewish high priesthood. In these respects, Acts resembles other kinds of histories produced in antiquity that used similar literary features to recount the lives of key leaders, significant incidents in the life of a particular city or region, or momentous events (major wars, for example) in a nation’s history. Such histories could be arranged according to a particular topic, or presented in a chronological sequence (Polybius). This could be restricted to a single, albeit complicated event, such as in Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, or as a series of interrelated events, as in Polybius’s account of Rome’s ascendance over the Mediterranean world. Some historical narratives covered the salient events in the memory of a nation, designed particularly to show how the character and identity of a people or nation was established and how they came to be. (For example, Josephus’s twenty-volume Antiquities of the Jews sketches the significant events, beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing to Josephus’s own day, in the history of Judaism.) Contemporary historians sometimes call this genre a “general history” or a “historical monograph.” These ancient histories commonly had a number of principal characters and tended to employ a wide range of subgenres, such as travel narratives, anecdotes, private letters, dialogues, and public speeches. For the most part, ancient Greco-Roman histories were creative literary productions and were not concerned necessarily with exacting certitude with regard to dates or facts. Historians exercised creative freedom in how they compiled and communicated their information (Ehrman, 155). Thus the ancient view of history was not unified, and historians in the Greco-Roman world produced a variety of differing literature that was designated as history. Moreover, for many ancient historians, the relevant criteria for historical narratives were similarity, plausibility, and persuasiveness. Acts seems most closely to correspond to these designations in that it provides a single, orderly account that sketches the salient events of the history of the Jesus movement, from its origins to a point in the not-too-distant past, to show how the Christian identity as a new genus or people was established (Palmer).
The act of persuasion requires the use of language intentionally and purposefully crafted to convey meaning and appeal. Contemporary historians increasingly recognize that language shapes and creates the past; the basic events of human experience do not in and of themselves possess the qualities of coherence, unity, integrity, connectivity, comprehensiveness, and closure (S. Matthews, 20–24). Human ingenuity and creativity impose these formal narrative qualities on events and experience. Consequently, all written histories, whether ancient or modem, cannot be viewed as objective and unbiased accounts of what “really happened in the past.” Ancient and modern historians out of necessity pick and choose what to recount and what to present as significant or noteworthy. In this selection process, it is certain that a historian narrates events, intentionally or not, in such a way that exposes his or her priorities, values, beliefs, and interpretation of those events (Ehrman, 155). In contemporary postmodern thought, it is recognized that this is the ideological work that ancient (and modern) narratives do (S. Matthews, 21). This important shift in perspective for understanding ancient historical writings has potential to aid the contemporary reader in reading the Acts of the Apostles.