Introduction Part 4, Historical Accuracy of Acts
There was a shift in Biblical
scholarship in which the groundwork was laid during the Enlightenment period when
there was a reaction to the authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic church. In Enlightenment thinking the Middle Ages was often
referred to as the Dark Ages because they looked at the time as being
intellectually dark. It was not a time of intellectual darkness but in terms of
the Enlightenment philosophers it was intellectually dark because of what they
considered to be the teaching of the church. Often this is mis-portrayed
in history classes as a struggle between reason and religion, and it is not. It
was a struggle between two different kinds of reason. What really shaped,
twisted or distorted the teaching of the Bible and theology in the Middle Ages
was the influence first of Platonism and then the influence of Aristotilianism. Both philosophers and theologians became
enamored with Greek thought and it was within the framework of Platonism and Aristotilianism that theology was interpreted and the Bible
was interpreted. That led to a certain amount of superstition and distortions
of biblical teaching.
When western civilization
rediscovered the original language MSS of the Bible it drove it to a study of the original.
And at the same time—late 1400s—the combination of the printing
press and the ability to mass produce Bibles in Greek texts, plus the invasion
into Europe of the Moslem hordes caused the monasteries that were in the areas
which had the treasures of ancient MSS and scrolls to gather them up and flee
into Europe. Things that had been hidden away in monastic libraries for
literally a thousand years or so suddenly came to light. This was part of the
Renaissance. In southerm Europe the Renaissance drove
the scholars to go to the original sources for Aristotle, Plato through the
Greek and Roman writers. But in central and northern Europe, especially
Germany, Switzerland and France, it drove them to the original sources of the
Scripture. That is what caused real and genuine revival; that is what brought
light into darkness. But it also brought an overthrow of the authority of the
Roman Catholic church.
Once that authority that had really
dominated everybody and kept everything under control for over a thousand years
in western Europe began to be questioned and thrown off then there were those
who really weren’t interested in being under the authority of God either, so
they became independent. They were what is known as
the forerunners of the modern secular humanists. They became Enlightenment
thinkers trying to reach absolute truth without paying any attention to the
Bible and rejecting any kind of external authority. That led to a questioning
of Biblical accuracy. So starting in the late 100s and early 1700s there were
these Enlightenment thinkers whose assumption was that God certainly can’t
communicate to people. That took root and eventually flowered in the early
nineteenth century and gave birth to what has become known as nineteenth
century European Protestant liberalism. It has affected everything so that
today when we think of Presbyterian theology, Methodist theology, or even in
Judaism, they were affected by it. Presbyterian and Methodist theology is not
today what it was 130 years ago. Everything changed in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries and among Protestants that was called the
fundamentalist-modernist movement. Modernist for those who rejected Biblical
authority, rejected miracles, rejected Pauline authorship as much as they
could, rejected the deity of Christ, rejected the literal resurrection of
Christ, all on the presupposition that the Bible is just a fallible human book
written by fallible human beings and there is no such thing as God inspiring an
inerrant and infallible Scripture. Part of that was an attack on both the
Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts as being historically inaccurate in a
number of different places.
But those attacks that were made in
the late 1700s and the early 1800s, even though they gave birth to an
anti-Biblical theological system, had their foundational ideas disproved
through historical and archeological discoveries in the late 19th
century and into the 20th century. Nevertheless those liberal ideas had taken
hold and people still would teach them. There was the documentary hypothesis on
the multiple documents behind the Pentateuch and it is one that was clearly
disproved by archeology and the discovery and analysis of many ancient
documents in the early 20th century. Yet you can still go to
university and be taught this as the actual fact by many historians.
Luke’s accuracy as a historian came
under attack for most of the 1700s and 1800s. But there was a scholar by the
name of William Ramsey who was one of the early archeologists and historians
and theologians who did a tremendous amount of work, especially in the area of
Greece and what is now Turkey, to validate the history that we have in Luke and
Acts, and to validate the fact that Luke was exactly right in the way he wrote
things. For example, when he refers to certain provinces in Asia Minor he used
the correct terms, and he used terms that would be correct for his period of
time. The terms for leaders, government officials and things of that nature
would change. Those who were rulers in Thessalonica were different terms than
those that were used in Athens, and those were different from the terms that
were used in Corinth. Maybe 100 years earlier they were different and 200 years
later they were different but the terms Luke uses in Acts were accurately
correct for that time period. His geography is correct. All of the things that
he refers to just as an aside reflect the culture, the history, the geography,
the politics, the administration of this period of time and have clearly been
demonstrated to be accurate so that no legitimate scholar to day doubts or
questions the historicity of either the Gospel or the book of Acts. Luke has it
right and it has been demonstrated that way.
The author of Acts was acquainted
with all the different political arrangements in the provinces which are
covered in the narration of Paul’s missionary journeys. At the time when Paul
was in Cyprus the proconsul was in charge and although there had been many
changes within a brief period of time Luke used the correct title when
describing the proconsul in Cypress. Philippi is accurately described as a
Roman colony in Acts. This is when Paul was thrown in prison and the next day
he emphasized the fact that he was a Roman citizen. If that city was a Roman
colony and he is a Roman citizen then how they treated him was completely
outside of the law, and that meant that they could be brought up on charges and
be executed for treating a Roman citizen in such a manner. In Thessalonica the
unusual term politarches [politarxej] is used. That term was not used anywhere else in the
entire Roman empire but evidence now shows that that
is what the rulers in Thessalonica were called. At Malta the ruler is called
“chief man” but the Greek term that is used is accurate for that time period.
Also at Ephesus there are correct references to the local government
organization. All of this is to show that when Luke talked about the rulers,
the different terms that he uses, the ways he describes the geography, the
travels, accurately reflects what we have learned about that time period
through archeology, through inscriptural evidence and
historical writings of that time. Luke shows that he genuinely is a man of that
era. Luke could not have been written in the second century after Christ
because things were very different in that time, so this means he must have
been writing in the middle of the first century.
The Herods:
The trouble is that the term “Herod,” like Caesar, came to be applied to all of
his sons, those of the family, and so it can get a little confusing. Herod the
Great in his youth really was an incredible, accomplished, educated individual.
He had a passion for architecture and the architectural projects that he had
were just incredible. But he was a man who as time went by became erratic,
neurotic, psychotic, and he was paranoid. He believed, with some good reason in
some cases, that his sons were all out to kill him so that they could take over
the kingdom. In order to forestall their conspiratorial attempts to overthrow
or kill him he had them executed. Reading the life and times of Herod the Great
and his family, as he marries one woman and divorces and he marries another,
would outdo any soap opera on television.
Herod ruled from 37 BC to 4 BC. When he died
his kingdom was divided up among his sons. Herod Archelaus
who only rules to 6 BC is called an ethnarch. Another son, Herod
Antipas, is called a tetrarch, and he is significant for the book of Acts
because he reigns until 39 AD and then Herod Philip then tetrarch is barely
involved in the period of Acts and rules only until 34. When Antipas died he
was replaced by Herod Agrippa I who ruled from 39-44 and he is mentioned in
Acts 12 specifically. He was succeeded by Herod Agrippa II.
Herod the Great was an Idumite, i.e. a descendant of Esau. The territory of the Idumites is in the south of Judea. In 47 BC he was
appointed to be the governor of Galilee. At the time he was appointed he got
into trouble with the Jewish authorities on several occasions. He was stirring
up too much trouble so the Romans appointed him to be the governor of Syria
within a couple of years. In 41 BC Mark Anthony appointed Herod and his brother to be
tetrarchs of Judea. Then in 40 BC the Parthians invaded and
gained control of Jerusalem. They worked with various rebellious elements among
the Jews and caused a revolt to take place. The Parthians
came from the area of Persian and Iraq and that is the same area of the old
Babylonian empire that was made up by the Medes and the Persians. The Parthians were the inheritors of the empire of the Medes
and the Persians and one of the tribes of the Medes was called the Magi. They
had a lot of background in various types of magic, astronomy and astrology, and
it is believed that because of the use of that term in the Aramaic text of
Daniel that when Daniel, because of his ability to interpret the dreams of
Nebuchadnezzar, that he was made a member of this Magi caste. Later on this
caste became so powerful in the basic structure of the Parthian empire that
they are the ones who determined the succession of kingship. So the Magi
actually played a major role in appointing the successive kings in the Parthian
empire.
With Herod in 40 this insurrection
occurs in Judea that is fomented by the Parthians and
he has to flee. They set up Antigonus who was one of
the leaders in the Maccabean dynasty to be a puppet
ruler in Jerusalem. His brother was captured and before he could be tortured he
committed suicide. Herod took his family to Masada where he was protected in a
fortification and then he went to Rome for help against the Parthians.
He approached Mark Anthony and Augustus Octavian and they appoint him to be the
king of the Jews. They send him back with the appropriate Roman support and he
was eventually successful in expelling the Parthians
from the area of Judea and Galilee. In the process thousands of Jews are
slaughtered because they are fighting against Herod with the Parthians because they don’t want Rome to dominate them. So
this does not make Herod very popular among the Jews.
The succession to Herod was a mess.
His sons Alexander and Aristobulus, the sons of Mariamne I, were his favorites. He dotes on them but as
they come to adulthood and have been spoiled they became a little impatient for
his death, so that they could inherit the kingdom, and decide to maybe help
nature along a little bit. They are found guilty of conspiracy to kill him and are
executed by strangulation in 7 BC. Antipater is then the one, the sons of his first
wife Doris, who is brought back from exile, but he grows impatient as well and
attempts to poison Herod. But it doesn’t go well and instead, Herod’s other
brother drank the poison. Antipater was imprisoned. Herod had to wait to get
permission from Caesar to execute him and in the meantime he designated Archelaus to be king in his place, and then to appoint his
next son Antipas as the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea,
and Philip to be the tetrarch of the area of Eritrea.
Herod died miserably in 4 BC. He had
Antipater executed just a few days before his death. Archelaus
and Antipas then go to Rome because they want to dispute the inheritance line.
Augustus compromised by making Archelaus the ethnarch—which means ruler of a nation—over Idumea, Judea and Samaria. Antipas is
made tetrarch over Galilee and Perea.
Archelaus doesn’t last very long but he is the worst of Herod’s
sons. Before going to Rome to dispute the inheritance with Antipas he had 3000
killed by putting down a revolution that was led by people who were avenging
those his father had killed. He was so brutal that the Jewish authorities sent
a delegation to Rome in order to protest his being appointed as the ethnarch. He further angers the Jews by marrying his
half-brother, Alexander’s, widow. And he is so repressive and intolerable that
finally he is removed by the emperor. The birth of Jesus occurs just before 4 BC and the death
of Herod the Great. So Jesus had to have been born about a year before Herod
died.
Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee
and Perea, is the ruler through the first nine
chapters of the book of Acts. He is the Herod who imprisoned and executed John
the Baptist, Mark 6:14-28. Jesus refers to him as the fox, Luke 13:3. Like his
father he is a gifted architect and administrator. He built the city of
Tiberius which he named for the emperor. His family life and marriages are just
about as confusing as his father’s. Initially he married the daughter of the Nabatean king. Then he divorced her to marry Herodius, the wife of his half-brother Herod Philip. This
is the marriage John the Baptist announced as unlawful. This is what eventually
led to John losing his head. The Nabatean king wasn’t
happy that his daughter had been divorced. He took it as an affront so he
attacked Antipas in AD 36. Antipas was defeated and this is viewed as divine judgment for the
execution of John the Baptist. In AD 39 his nephew Herod Agrippa informed the
emperor Caligula that Antipas was plotting against him, and so Antipas was
deposed and exiled until his death.
The last one that is significant in
Acts is Herod Agrippa, referred to also as Herod the king in Acts 12. He is the
son of Aristobulus the grandson of Herod the Great,
and following the execution of his father in 7 BC he grew up in Rome with extremely
close ties to the emperor’s family. There was a messianic thought about him.
That is important to understand. There was a lot going on behind the scenes.
There was a sort of messianic aura about Herod Agrippa and so when he comes to
take his place as ruler of the kingdom then he is idolized by the people. Acts
doesn’t go into a lot of detail on this but it is thought that this is one of
the reasons that when he is being idolized by the people in Caesarea and they
are shouting that he is like a god, God took him out of the picture at that
point because a sort of messiah cult could have developed around him. This is
another way of God’s protection of the infant church. He had a son, Herod
Agrippa II, and two daughters, Berenice (Acts 25:13)
and Drusilla. It was to Herod Agrippa that Paul,
explains the gospel.
There are seven progress reports
that are given in the book of Acts. In Acts 2:47 we are told that the people
who Peter’s first sermon on the day of Pentecost were praising God, having
favor with all the people, and the Lord added to the church daily those who
were being saved. In Acts chapter seven the Word of God spread and the number
of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the
priests were obedient to the faith. So there were a huge
number who were trusting Jesus as the Messiah. In Acts 9:31 NASB
“So
the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being
built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy
Spirit, it continued to increase.” So there are literally tens of thousands of
Jewish people being converted. The church is primarily Jewish until the period
of the sixties, so for the first thirty years it was Jewish and then the gospel
goes to the Gentile nations via Paul. Acts 12:24 is
the fourth marker. NASB “But the word of the Lord continued to grow
and to be multiplied.” The next is in Acts 16:5 NASB “So the
churches were being strengthened in the faith, and were increasing in number
daily.” Next, Acts 19:20 NASB “So the word
of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.” Finally in Acts 28:31 NASB
“preaching the kingdom of God
and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered.”
Remember
Acts 28:31. This is near the end of Acts and is a sort of summary, and it is
talking about what is going on. They were preaching the kingdom
of God. What does that mean? We have to think about
that because this idea of the kingdom of God,
as we will see, is present from the very beginning.
The
key verse in Acts is 1:8 NASB “but you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My
witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea
and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the
earth.” Those three divisions are Jerusalem, 1:1-6:7;
Judea and Samaria,
6:8-12:25; to the end of the earth, 9:32-28:31.
In
the first section God the Holy Spirit authenticates, empowers and directs the
apostles’ witness in Jerusalem. God always
authenticates what He is doing. Nothing happens in private, God always
authenticates with some sort of public validation, the greatest of which is the
resurrection. In Acts 1:3 we are told NASB “To these He also
presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs…” There
is validation. Jesus gives them confirming empirical evidence that He is alive.
“… appearing to them over {a period of} forty days and speaking of the things
concerning the kingdom of God.”
So during that forty-day period from the resurrection until ten days before the
day of Pentecost Jesus is teaching them about the kingdom
of God. Then the last verse in the book of Acts talks
about the fact that the church as it is expanding is teaching about the kingdom
of God. So what does that mean? It is very important
to understand.
So
God through the Holy Spirit authenticates what He is doing, validates it. He
empowers the church through the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that
not many days from then they would receive power when the Holy Spirit had come
upon them. So the growth of the church is not a natural phenomenon, it happened
as a result of the work of God the Holy Spirit within the church. The Holy
Spirit empowers and directs their witness initially in Jerusalem
in the first five chapters. The division in the first two chapters is the birth
of the new spiritual entity, the church. At the very beginning is the prologue
in the first three verses. Jesus provided convincing evidence of His
resurrection and taught the disciples about the kingdom
of God.
Acts 1:1 NASB “The first account I
composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do
and teach.” Here Luke is just starting a second volume of something he has
already started. He is continuing the record of all that had taken place,
initially with Jesus in His public ministry up to the resurrection, and at this
point he is going to continue with what had happened after the resurrection. In
the Greek the second word, which is untranslated, is men [men].
It is often untranslated and is put into a narrative
because it is one of those words that in Greek writing and story-telling
creates an expectation in the reader’s mind that something else is coming. As
soon as you see the word you know that there is more to come, it raises the
expectation of ongoing action.
He writes this to Theophilus. This is the same Theophilus
that is mentioned in Luke 1:3 – NASB “it seemed fitting for me
as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write
{it} out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus.”
He investigated carefully. This is how Luke was; he was a historian. The name Theophilus literally means—Theo from theos/God; philus from phileo/love—someone
who is dear to God or loved by God. Some people think that this was a pseudonym
for someone who was high up in the household of Caesar. Others think that this
was just an idealized name for not a particular individual but just anyone who
was a lover of God. But none of this is really necessary. Theophilus
was a common name and that is attested very much from documents from the first
century. This also fits the style that was typical of how someone would address
a patron, someone who perhaps had helped to finance them so that they were able
to carry on their research and write this kind of a book. We see this with
Josephus’ writings. At the beginning of his first volume of Against Apion he addresses the volume to Epaphroditus
who refers to as “the most excellent of men.” The second volume of Against Apion is introduced by the words “by means of the
former volume, my most honored Epaphroditus, I have
demonstrated our antiquities.” So we see that the way Luke begins the book of
Acts is very typical of the ways that things were written at that time period.
He is going to write about the things that Jesus began both to do and to teach.
That was what was in the former account, the beginning of Jesus’ earthly
ministry, what He did in terms of the miracles that He performed, and what He
taught.
Acts 1:2 NASB “until the
day when He was taken up {to heaven,} after He had by the Holy Spirit given
orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.” In this verse to make it good sense
it is necessary to rearrange all of the clauses in the Greek. So to
retranslate: “Until which day He was taken up, He had already [aorist
participle] given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen through the Holy
Spirit.” This introduces us to the doctrine of apostleship.