The Acts of the Apostles (, Práxeis Apostólōn and ) is the fifth book of the New Testament. It recounts the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message across the Roman Empire. Acts comprises the second part of a two-volume work known as Luke-Acts with its prequel, the Gospel of Luke.

Acts and the Gospel of Luke share the same author. Tradition identifies the writer as Luke the Evangelist, a doctor who travelled with Paul the Apostle. The author is unnamed in the text but appears as a participant in the first-person we verses of Acts 16-27. Critical opinion remains evenly divided about whether Luke the physician wrote it. Most scholars still regard the author of Luke–Acts as a companion of Paul, although others note tensions with the Pauline epistles."The principle essay in third regard is P. Vielhauer, 'On the "Paulinism" of Acts', in L.E. Keck and J. L. Martyn (eds.), Studies in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 33–50, who suggests that Luke's presentation of Paul was, on several fronts, a contradiction of Paul's own letters (e.g. attitudes on natural theology, Jewish law, christology, eschatology). This has become the standard position in German scholarship, e.g., Conzelmann, Acts; J. Roloff, Die Apostelgeschichte (NTD; Berlin: Evangelische, 1981) 2–5; Schille, Apostelgeschichte des Lukas, 48–52. This position has been challenged most recently by Porter, "The Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Letters: Some Common Misconceptions', in his Paul of Acts, 187–206. See also I.H. Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leister: InterVarsity Press, 1980) 42–44; E.E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 2nd edn, 1974) 45–47.", Pearson, "Corresponding sense: Paul, dialectic, and Gadamer", Biblical Interpretation Series, p. 101 (2001). Brill. Most scholars treat Acts as historiography, though focus is more on the author's aims than on settling questions of historicity. The book is usually dated to 80–90 AD.

The Gospel of Luke depicts the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Acts continues the story of Christianity, beginning with the ascension of Jesus and the mission from Jerusalem into the wider Mediterranean world. The early chapters describe Pentecost, the shared life of the first believers, and the establishment of the church at Antioch. The later chapters follow Paul as he carries the message throughout the empire and conclude with his imprisonment in Rome as he awaits trial.

Luke–Acts addresses how the Jewish Messiah came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church by arguing that the message reached the Gentiles after the Jewish rejection. The work also defends the Jesus movement for Jewish audiences, since most speeches respond to Jewish concerns while Roman officials arbitrate disputes about Jewish customs and law. Luke presents the followers of Jesus as a Jewish sect entitled to legal protection, but remains ambivalent about the future of Jews and Christians, affirming Jesus' Jewish identity while emphasizing the Jews' rejection of the Messiah.

Composition and setting

Title, unity of Luke–Acts, authorship and date

The Gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution attributed to a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus and the early church. The name "Acts of the Apostles" was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was an existing name for the book or one invented by Irenaeus; it does seem clear that it was not given by the author, as the word práxeis (deeds, acts) only appears once in the text (Acts 19:18) and there it refers not to the apostles but to deeds confessed by their followers.

The shared author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; this is significant, because more high-brow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business people who made up the early church of Paul and were presumably Luke's audience. According to Church tradition dating from the 2nd century, the author was Luke, named as a companion of the apostle Paul in three letters attributed to Paul. Critical opinion on the traditional attribution to Luke was assessed to be roughly evenly divided near the end of the 20th century. The author was not named in either volume, as was common for ancient biographies and histories, including Tacitus's Germania and Diogenes Laertius. Most scholars maintain that the author of Luke–Acts, whether named Luke or not, met Paul. The interpretation of the "we" passages as indicative that the writer was a historical eyewitness (whether Luke the evangelist or not), remains the most influential in current biblical studies."A glance at recent extended treatments of the "we" passages and commentaries demonstrates that, within biblical scholarship, solutions in the historical eyewitness traditions continue to be the most influential explanations for the first-person plural style in Acts. Of the two latest full-length studies on the "we" passages, for example, one argues that the first-person accounts came from Silas, a companion of Paul but not the author, and the other proposes that first-person narration was Luke's (Paul's companion and the author of Acts) method of communicating his participation in the events narrated.17

17. Jurgen Wehnert, Die Wir-Passegen der Apostelgeschitchte: Ein lukanisches Stilmittel aus judischer Tradition (GTA 40; Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989); Claus-Jurgen Thornton, Der Zeuge des Zeugen: Lukas als Historiker der Paulus reisen (WUNT 56; Tugingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991). See also, Barrett, Acts of the Apostles, and Fitzmyer, Acts of the Apostles.", Campbell, "The "we" passages in the Acts of the Apostles: the narrator as narrative", p. 8 (2007). Society of Biblical Literature. Objections to this viewpoint include the twentieth century consensus emphasized the differences in theology and historical narrative with the authentic letters of Paul the Apostle. Influential figures such as Philip Vielhauer cast doubt on the tradition, while B. H. Streeter argued that Luke could have known Paul without adopting his theology."The principle essay in this regard is P. Vielhauer, 'On the "Paulinism" of Acts', in L.E. Keck and J. L. Martyn (eds.), Studies in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 33–50, who suggests that Luke's presentation of Paul was, on several fronts, a contradiction of Paul's own letters (e.g. attitudes on natural theology, Jewish law, christology, eschatology). This has become the standard position in German scholarship, e.g., Conzelmann, Acts; J. Roloff, Die Apostelgeschichte (NTD; Berlin: Evangelische, 1981) 2–5; Schille, Apostelgeschichte des Lukas, 48–52. This position has been challenged most recently by Porter, "The Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Letters: Some Common Misconceptions', in his Paul of Acts, 187–206. See also I.H. Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leister: InterVarsity Press, 1980) 42–44; E.E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 2nd edn, 1974) 45–47.", Pearson, "Corresponding sense: Paul, dialectic, and Gadamer", Biblical Interpretation Series, p. 101 (2001). Brill. More recent developments in interpretation find that Paul and the author of Luke–Acts are not as different theologically as previously thought. Support for the ecclesiastical tradition based on medical language in the Lucan corpus has been uncommon since Henry Cadbury's work.

The earliest possible date for Luke–Acts is around 62 AD, the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, Most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul. Some contend that if it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles (argued to begin circulation in the late first century) or the work of Josephus, a date in the early 2nd century is possible.Tyson, Joseph B., (April 2011). "When and Why Was the Acts of the Apostles Written?", in: The Bible and Interpretation: "...A growing number of scholars prefer a late date for the composition of Acts, i.e., c. 110–120 CE. Three factors support such a date. First, Acts seems to be unknown before the last half of the second century. Second, compelling arguments can be made that the author of Acts was acquainted with some materials written by Josephus, who completed his Antiquities of the Jews in 93–94 CE...Third, recent studies have revised the judgment that the author of Acts was unaware of the Pauline letters."Gnuse, R. (2002). Vita Apologetica: The Lives of Josephus and Paul in Apologetic Historiography. Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 13(2), 151–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/095182070201300203, Abstract: "This article suggests that the author of Acts may have been inspired by Josephan texts when crafting biographical narratives about Paul." However, many arguments mediate against this dating, such as the Gospel of John's awareness of the gospel, its independence from the Gospel of Matthew in the two-source hypothesis, and 1 Clement.

The historical Paul never mentions any "Luke the doctor", according to Bart Ehrman (since Colossians is not authentic). Scholars use the word "Luke" wantonly.

Manuscripts There are two major textual variants of Acts, the Western text-type and the Alexandrian. The oldest complete Alexandrian manuscripts date from the 4th century and the oldest Western ones from the 6th, with fragments and citations going back to the 3rd. Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts. The majority of scholars prefer the Alexandrian (shorter) text-type over the Western as the more authentic, but this same argument would favour the Western over the Alexandrian for the Gospel of Luke, as in that case the Western version is the shorter.

Genre, sources and historicity of Acts