Mikeal C. Parsons on Luke's Paul in Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist

I got to know Mikeal Parsons while he was on sabbatical during my Cambridge years. What year now slips me. I found Mikeal to be a great guy and someone who was both engaging and generous. Recently I picked up his book on Luke which is in the Hendrickson series Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist. I really like the series. I have used the two books Warren Carter has writen on Matthew and John for classes I've taught. Parson's book is quite different that Carter's two and is not really ideal for an introduction to the book. However this is not a criticism of the books since Parson's makes it plain in the introduction that he has not intended it to be such a book.

Parsons uses the format of Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist to focus his discussion on the Greco-Roman context of Luke's Gospel and Acts. One of its chief concerns is to show the role of ancient rhetoric in Luke's writing. Parson's chapters are informative and insightful. Parson's also has a very interesting chapter on the concept of "friendship" and "physiognomy" in the Greco-Roman world and Luke-Acts.

One of the most important sections of the book as far as I'm concerned is his discussion of the relationship between the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Pauline Letters. For me these 16 pages (123-39) are worth the price of the book. In this section Parsons critiques the standard view that the Paul of Acts is irreconcilably different than the Paul of the letters.

As an aside, teaching a course on Paul I run into this issue a great deal. As recently as this semester I've had to lecture on this topic because one of the textbooks I'm using for the course Pamela Eisenbaum's Paul Was Not a Christian assumes just such a negative stance toward the Paul of Acts. In her study she excludes Acts as evidence for reconstructing Paul.

Parson's however shows by an unconventional means that Luke's Paul would have appeared familiar to the authorial audience who had known Paul through his letters. Parson writes:

We conclude that the authorial audience who knew Paul through his letters (and probably knew him only through those letters) would have recognized Luke's portrait of Paul as a reliable, though enriched and expanded, presentation of that same Apostle who through his rhetoric, miracles, suffering, adn throught, proclaimed that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (p. 139).

I would only quibble with Parson's discussion of the Torah in Paul and Acts (pp. 137-8). The discussion is weakened by the assumption that Paul's on-going relationship to the Torah was not motivated by theological conviction but rather expediency as evidenced in Timothy's circumcision (Acts 16:1-3) and Paul's statements in 1 Cor 9:19-23.

The Paulineness of Paul's Speech in Acts 13

Paul's evangelical preaching in Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13.16-41 and in Lystra/Derbe in Acts 14.15-17 are among the lesser studied speeches of Acts (lesser compared to Peter's Pentecost sermon, Stephen's martyrdom speech, and Paul's Areopagus address). The authenticity of the speeches in Acts are obviously question since it is debated as to whether Luke was even intending to give an accurate account, did he have sources that heard and remembered the orations, then there is the relative uniformity of the speeches and their accordance with Luke's own theological perspective, not to mention the practice of speech narration in antiquity. As I'm reading Jimmy Dunn's Beginning from Jerusalem (and for the rest of my natural life I shall probably still be slowly wading through it), Dunn makes a good point about the elements of contact that Paul's speeches in Acts 13-14 have with Paul's letters:

- Paul's understanding of the gospel as for the Jew first and also for the Greek (Acts 13.46/Rom 1.16).

- Paul as fulfilling the mission of the Servant of Isaiah 49.6 (Acts 13.47/Gal 1.15-16, etc.)

- Paul's sermon in 14.15-17 is a variation of his indictment of paganism in Rom. 1.20-23.

- Echoes of Paul's exhortation abut suffering as a necessary prequisite to glory in Acts 14.22 are common enough in his letters.

Steve Walton did his Ph.D thesis on Paul's Speech to the Ephesian elders and the exhortaton in 1 Thessalonians (SNTS), and I wonder if a comparison of the Paulinism of Acts 13-14 with Romans would be a good subject for some other brave soul.

John Knox on Pauline Chronology

The American scholar John Knox in his little book Chapters In a Life of Paul, comments on Gal 1:18-22 about Paul's denial with an oath that he had never seen any of the other apostles except James:

"Sometimes the scholars argue as to why Paul felt constrained to take a solemn oath to the truth of his statement here. I am tempted to suggest that he did so because he had some premonition that most of the books to be written about him in the centuries afteward were going to say to him in effect: 'You are wrong about this, Paul. Of course you are not deliberately lying, but quite obviously you are mistaken. For the Acts of the Apostles gives a quite different story. It was written, we have good reason to believe, by Luke, who was a traveling companion of yours and therefre, you will agree, could hardly have been mistaken on a point like this.' As if to forestall such an answer, Paul took a solmen oath; but certainly to little avail; nine out of ten of the 'lives of Paul' have preferred Luke's version." (p. 37)

I think that scores a 12.6 on the sarcasmometer when it's only meant to go up to ten!

Bengel on Acts

J.A. Bengel concluded his comments on Acts with the words:

"Victoria Verbi Dei: Paulus Romae, apex evangelii, Actorum finis ... Hierosolymis coepit: Romae desinit. Habes, Ecclesia, formam tuam: tuum est, servare eam, et depositum custodire".

"The victory of the Word of God. Paul at Rome, the culmination of the Gospel, the conclusion of Acts ... It began at Jerusalem: it finishes at Rome. Here, O church, you have your pattern. It is your duty to preserve it and to guard it".

Cited from Howard Marshall, Luke: Historian and Theologian, 221-22.

Forthcoming Acts Commentaries

I'm currently re-hashing my lecture notes on a course on Luke-Acts, so I'm naturally interested in forthcoming Acts commentaries. A few I've learnt of:

1. Steve Walton (WBC).
2. Richard I. Pervo (Hermeneia).
3. Craig Keener (Eerdmans).