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How old is Book of Acts?
Question:
I had a question regarding the dating of Acts (and consequently Luke). I had always assumed Acts was written circa 62 AD since it does not mention the Neronian persecution and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD and ends with Paul in Rome. However, I read recently about the supposition that Acts 21:38 is an amalgamation of the accounts of uprisings in Palestine written by Josephus in his Antiquities 20:164 (and following). This would put Acts at 95 - 100 AD and not written by a companion of Paul. How would you respond to this and if true does it change a belief in inerrancy?Answer:
There have been schools of thought (e.g., Tübingen) that have promoted the late view of Acts--that it appeared around the middle of the second century as an attempt to merge Peter and Paul into one cohesive theological-history. These theories see Christianity as an eventual blend of two divergent theological streams, one led by each of the two prominent Apostles. The book of Acts does the blending, and poof! ...Christianity is born. For this view to work, Acts must be of a late date.
These views have been largely rejected in light of internal and external considerations. I am not aware of any proponents of this view who specifically suggest that Luke borrowed from Josephus. This kind of bald assertion would be impossible to establish. The language and content in the two accounts are disimilar. Josephus is the historian who regularly interacted with early Christian claims, documents, and traditions...not vice versa.
According to Josephus the Egyptian mentioned in 21:38 appeared around Jerusalem around AD 54 (Antiquities 20:8-6) during the reign of Archelaus (Herod's son, Matt. 2:2). Some equate him with a "Ben Stada" mentioned in the Talmud. The accounts are somewhat different. Where Josephus mentions the revolt of some 30,000, Luke mentions 4,000. If Luke were lifting the account from Josephus--why would he alter the information? Some suggest that the disparity may lie in the orthographical similarity of the Greek form for the two numbers (that is, the forms look almost identical). Scholars almost uniformly favor Luke's number.
There would be no conclusive way to support a claim of literary dependence of Luke on Josephus. Neither form nor content suggest it. There is nothing natural about the conclusion. Instead of connecting the historical dots someone seems to be leading us with breadcrumbs...
My views about inerrancy do no hang in the balances of these kinds of questions. When I find solutions to alleged discrepencies it serves the purpose of demonstration of the reliability of Scripture. While we can demonstrate the Bible's reliability (or inerrancy), proving it is another matter. What I mean by this is that I have a confidence in Scripture that goes beyond the evidence, though it is not apart from the evidence. I state my case this way to be careful not to suggest that I irrationally hold to inerrancy. But I have a certainty about Scripture affected by the work of the Holy Spirit that takes me past objective confidence to personal conviction. If this situation presented a historical conundrum of some kind, I would favor the veracity of Scripture foremost. Having said that, I don't believe any such "conundrum" exists to diminish the truth of Scripture. Time has born this out.
