Acts in Time and Space

Recent years have seen a steady stream of Acts commentaries but, by its sheer size and scope, Keener’s contribution – which begins with this, the first of four projected volumes – promises to be a marker around which subsequent scholarly currents will be required to navigate. In all practical realism, this is more a scholar’s commentary than one which likely to be found on the shelves of many church ministers but, in terms of challenging and setting the discourse of Acts studies, it is all the more important as such.

First, in a stance that will encourage some while annoying others, Keener is remarkably conservative in his assumptions and initial findings. For him, Acts is a first-century document, probably from shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, and he rebuts recent attempts to cast Acts as a later, second-century text (pp. 395-400). Its author is Luke who, according to Keener, was a periodic travelling companion with Paul and, probably, a physician (p. 402). Frustratingly, the argumentation for this is promised but delayed until the commentary on 16:10. What is clear from the outset, however, is that Keener casts Luke as writing history or, more precisely, apologetic historiography. It is this assertion which underpins this commentary more than any other. Rather than in tension, theologian and historian live instead in tandem: historical and literary questions are ‘inseparable’ (p. 18) and, ‘[l]ike other historians… Luke would not have thought theology incompatible with history’ (p. 157).

This is of paramount importance for Keener. His ‘socio-historical’ method weighs much evidence, but grants Luke the benefit of the doubt, especially where such doubts reflect limited extant evidence or what Keener sees as the excesses of modernist scepticism. His is a characteristic ‘high respect’ for Luke’s ‘historiographic interest and skill’ (p. 28), allowing for the exercise of ‘considerable freedom in adaptation’ from his sources (p. 178). Allowing Acts to function as a legitimate and plausible historical source is, Keener observes, more common among classicists than NT scholars, but Keener seeks to redress this imbalance (pp. 197-199 and, more widely, pp. 166-220). These volumes will test where such a maximalist and parity-seeking method will lead.

As said, such determinations will encourage or annoy. But, pitched as they are, they will also confront any casual dismissal of Acts as fictive, late, or somehow at odds with the wider New Testament. And it is here that Keener’s unmissable length comes into play.

The length of these volumes derives in a large part from Keener’s assembly of a vast compendium of historical data within which he wants Acts to be read. Wisely, for a project of this size, he begins with a prolegomenon which declares what he is intending to achieve and what he is not attempting here. On the positive front, he hopes that what he has assembled will ‘supply much fodder’ to stimulate further research into the history of earliest Christianity (p. 24). Certainly the fodder is there: the eighteen introductory chapters run to some 638 pages before the rest of this first volume covers Acts 1-2. At every page, Keener’s concern to locate Acts within the first century is readily apparent. The footnotes range far and wide, and a further 441 pages of bibliography and indexes are reserved for a CD-ROM, inserted within the back cover. This first volume shows a tenacity in tracking down data which might possibly inform historical questions and allay historical doubts which looks set to characterise this project as a whole. Thus, to mention only one example, the availability of water in Jerusalem for 3000 baptisms on the Day of Pentecost and whether such figures are liable to prime facie dismissal as inflated and/or fictional is explored at length (pp. 994-999). Here and elsewhere Keener projects Luke as a popular rather than an elite writer who is both faithful to historiographical ideals and in pursuit of a particular Tendenz, a theological agenda. This Tendenz regards the legitimacy of the Christian movement (pp. 163-164), via a ‘risky’ and ‘two-pronged’ apologia, whereby the Jesus movement is both ‘securely grounded in Israel’s history’ and ‘not nationalistic or subversive’ (p. 457).

As such, Keener provides a return to – and development from – earlier generations of Acts scholars who took history seriously within a conservative frame of reference. Both William Ramsey from a century ago and Colin Hemer’s more recent Acts in History are given due play (see, e.g., pp. 201-206), as is their tradition as carried forward in the 1990s by Eerdmans’ multi-volume series ‘The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting’.

More recently, however, conservative readings of Acts have tended to retreat from questions of history, happy to reside in the world of the text and make only occasional forays into the world behind the text. Against that trend, Keener reasserts the bridges between these worlds, and builds and paints them in a manner unfamiliar in the recent vistas of literary criticism. He intends a resurgence of historical inquiry: as he states, Keener has prioritised ‘making a contribution that is not easily possible for those who have not specialized in ancient extrabiblical sources’ (p. 439 n.2) and in this course he opens up for many readers a rich doorway into the world of Acts and that of its first ideal readers, who are appraised as urban, Greek, perhaps in northern Aegean cities which have been officially Romanised, and with some familiarity of rhetoric and the LXX.

A second and deeper innovation among Acts commentators, in both its scale and its attention, also frames this project as more than mere commentary on the text. As well as attending to the world behind the text, Keener’s work is also characterised by a frequent and deliberate move into the worlds in front of the text. This I deliberately pluralise: in a strategy diverging from earlier conservative scholars, Keener wants to break the ethnocentric hold of modern Western scholarship, both challenging its rationalistic limitations and broadening its engagement with other contemporary settings (see, e.g. pp. 362-371).

Keener’s treatment of signs in Acts is indicative of both these interests (see, broadly, pp. 343-380): he devotes considerable attention to contemporary manifestations of such phenomena, both in the Western and non-Western worlds, seeing them as widespread in both Acts and the church’s continuing mission today. Likewise, they are traced through church history, in both pre-modern and modern eras, in a manner unusual in most commentaries. This emphasis coheres with his reading of the narrative as providing prototypes for continuing mission by the church, the span of Acts having developed ‘from heritage to mission’ (pp. 438-440, cf. pp. 509-511). Among other blessings, the Spirit in Acts brings cross-cultural empowerment and signals compassion and mercy, especially for the poor and socially marginalised. Without agreeing with all that Keener concludes regarding signs, these horizons set within this first volume heralds a refreshing, challenging and even unsettling commentary for modern readers seeking to reappraise Acts after Christendom. Here modern Western elites find themselves jostling up against Majority World voices and lived experiences, such that neither is seen exactly as before following their encounter with the other.

Seven years in the writing, properly digesting Keener’s project will take a number of years and repeated readings. In content and approach his work will stimulate further readings and rereadings of Acts. As such, I welcome it for its rejuvenation of what pedagogy calls the ‘threshold concepts’ informing our engagement with Acts. ¹ Keener’s work will prove to be excursive and recursive, inviting readers into new liminal spaces behind, within and in front of the text. While invoking connections which were previously hidden from view, this will involve, for various readers in differing ways, forms of knowledge which are troublesome, counter-intuitive, or alien. For veteran readers of Acts and for those who have not read it before or for a long time, Keener presents a guide into that ‘certain surprisingness’ that awaits repeat readers of a story who, instead of trying to catch the bird in the net of reading, are willing to ‘throw our nets away and follow the bird to its own country’. ² This is an exhilarating prospect, ahead of further volumes yet to come.

MATTHEW SLEEMANOak Hill College, London