Animated Introduction to the Book of Acts

A 5 Part Series of 1 Minute Videos

I created this animated series of interviews with the historian Dr. Luke in 2012 when I was teaching a college course on Luke & Acts. My goal was to get my students interested in the textbook by contrasting the seriousness of Ben Witherington’s analysis of Luke’s writing with some campy humor and unexpected visuals.

I based my script on the Ben Witherington’s book, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. His book a must read for every student of Acts.

If you’re not familiar with Witherington’s commentary, the following is from his introductory remarks.

Acts is one of the most interesting and puzzling books in the New Testament. On the one hand it seems to be a simple chronological account of what happened to the church between Jesus’ ascension and Paul’s arrival in Rome, that is, roughly between a.d. 30 and a.d. 60. It is the only document in the NT that appears to be attempting a historical record of the time after Jesus’ life, but it does not even carry us up to the end of Paul’s life (probably in Rome in 64–68) or up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. We have no similar historical record at all about the last third of the first century when the church moved on beyond the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. Acts then, from our later perspective, seems to be about the beginnings of the Christian movement as it spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Roman Empire, and it may not be intended to be more than the open-ended document Acts 28 suggests it is (see below). If you go to Acts to answer all of the later questions about infant baptism, church order, or apostles after the first generation, you will be frustrated because of a lack of complete, and sometimes any, answers. Luke’s agenda was not ours.

In modern scholarship Luke has been a battlefield or “storm center” because of the difficult questions it raises. What shall we make of the fact that a fourth or more of Acts (at least some 365 verses) is made up of speeches most of which the author apparently was not present to hear? Why are so many things repeated in Acts in what obviously is a brief and selective account (e.g., Paul’s conversion and the Cornelius episode are both repeated in varying forms)? If Luke’s purpose is history in this document, why do we have so few chronological points of reference? Why is it that Peter fades out of the picture after Acts 15? Why is it that after Acts 9 we largely get the story of the expansion of the church by Paul, so that some have even wrongly dubbed this book the Acts of Paul?

Certainly the author isn’t attempting to provide a record of the acts of all the apostles, and thus its traditional title is a misnomer. Indeed, Acts’s latter half is preoccupied with the events and mission work and trials of a person who is only in one narrative even called an apostle (Acts 14:4, 14), and even that reference is debated.

Why is it that so many things important in Paul’s letters, such as the Judaizers and the collection, are apparently omitted here? Why is it that one-fourth of this book is devoted to Paul’s trial when we are not even told the outcome? Why is it that the Paul of Acts has so often struck scholars as a different Paul from the Paul of the letters? To say Acts raises as many questions as it answers is putting it mildly.

I have no delusions about being able to answer all the difficult questions about Acts in this commentary, but I do hope to bring to bear some of the fresh light that has been shed on this complex work by recent studies by scholars of ancient history, rhetoric, the classics, social developments, and other related matters, as well as dealing with various of the traditional exegetical matters. I believe a reasonably coherent picture of the nature and meaning of Acts emerges from these recent endeavors which helps us to understand much not only about the time of the author of Acts but also the times that on the face of it he chronicles. We must begin this study by dealing immediately with some of the thorny background and foreground issues the Acts of the Apostles raises, perhaps the thorniest of which is the issue of the genre and character of Luke’s work.

I hope my series inspires you to read the book of Acts with fresh eyes.

VIDEOS IN THIS SERIES

Check back for the next video…

• That Makes Me Wanna' Dance

• Pardon Me If I Repeat Myself

• Getting Stoned Changed The Church