Warren Fournier's Reviews > The Acts of the Apostles in the Original Greek

This is by far the hardest book of the Bible I've read so far. First of all, the names are more confusing than a Sicilian wedding, where everyone is named Tony or Joe, or a Serbian one where everyone is named Dan or David. John is actually Mark, Saul is actually Paul, Simon is actually Peter, and there are like three other Simons, and three Marys, two Judases, etc.

Also, like a David Lynch film, people don't respond the way you expect to direct questions or events. It's hard to know what is a dream, a vision, or reality. I have no idea what is going on sometimes.

For example, we are told twice about the same event that occurs to Peter, where a "vessel" descends from the sky like a sheet held by all four corners, and a voice tells him to "kill and eat." He then sees a bunch of animals (in a dream?) and Peter says, "I don't eat unclean things," and the voice says that "what the Lord has cleansed is no longer common." The very next thing that happens is three messengers from Caesarea arrive and want him to have a chat with their boss Cornelius (but I'm not sure about what) and then Peter is arrested by Herod, though none of these events are related.

What's going on here? Flying saucers? Artistic representations depict a few angels and a bunch of domestic animals flying around on a literal sheet. Some say the message is that with the new covenant, God's people don't need to adhere to the Old Testament culinary rules. Others say that the point was that Peter did not need to restrict himself to only spreading the word about Jesus to Jews, but to everyone, even the "unclean." I think that this latter interpretation is more likely, since the Apostles were already getting grief by Sadducees for hanging out with uncircumcised Gentiles, and since Cornelius, who was a centurion, had sent word that he wanted to meet with Peter, God was saying that it was His will that Peter do so. But the whole thing is weird and has strange gaps in logic.

My point is that though Acts and the Gospel of Luke are supposed to be written by the same person, and Acts is literally a direct sequel to the Lukan Gospel, they feel like two very different texts to me. Whereas the Gospel is more of a straight Hellenistic biography of Jesus, the Acts is more of a fever dream. It is assumed that both these books were written by an actual eyewitness, as the author occasionally refers to himself as present in the action by using "I," "we," and "us." But despite their being many parallels in structure between Luke and Acts, there are several contradictions. The Gospel places the ascension of Jesus into heaven on Easter Sunday, but Acts says it happened 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead. Now, it is possible that Luke seems so different from Acts because the author used previous writings as a basis for his Gospel, such as Matthew and the mysterious Q document. If scholars are convinced that Luke-Acts was written by the same person, I can only assume that he had the same problem as anyone in the writing business. Continuity is hard.

Acts is one of the most important sacred writings to Christians, as it concerns the very earliest days after Jesus' death and how the new religion of the Christ was spread throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus' companions are granted extraordinary powers for their mission, are able to speak other languages, heal the sick, and raise the dead. They convert a wide following to Christianity, most notably Paul, who had previously persecuted the early Christians. Much of the latter part of Acts concerns Paul's ministry and capture in Jerusalem, which mirrors the fate of Jesus, though Paul remains in prison much longer, from where he is able to continue his ministry through various written correspondence.

Overall, Acts answers the question of how the Messiah of the Jews came to have a non-Jewish church, but it also serves as a defence of Christianity as a sect of Judaism, and thus entitled to certain legal protections from the Roman government.

This is an immensely interesting text, but while I recognize the importance of this work in human history and civilization, this is not one that seems to get any easier for me with subsequent rereadings.