What are the main messages of Acts of the Apostles?

Answer 1

In Acts chapters 10 and 11, Peter experienced a miraculous vision and was visited by the Holy Ghost, giving him a sign to bring Gentiles into the Church. In that account, Peter defended his actions in choosing to eat with the Gentiles and asserted that the Church must preach to the Gentiles. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus in search of Paul. So, the surface message is that Peter was clearly responsible for the decision to admit the Gentiles, to eat with them, and to allow what had been regarded as unclean foods; Paul's absence clearly shows that he had no part to play in these reforms. Chapter 11 ends with the decision to provide relief for the Christians of Judea during the Great Famine of 44 to 48 CE, with Paul once again absent and only involved through a message requiring his assistance.

Taken in the context of Paul's own account of events, in his epistles, the underlying message of Acts chapter 11 is that Paul played a very peripheral role and that Peter was the apostle who proposed and achieved these historic reforms.

According to Paul's own account in Galatians, he took it upon himself to preach to the Gentiles. He even rebuked Peter in Antioch for refusing to eat with the Gentiles. A similar contrast occurs when in Galatians, Paul tells us that he visited Jerusalem and argued forcefully for the Gentiles to be admitted without the requirement to be circumcised, whereas Acts gives Peter the credit for this reform. Paul personally promised to "remember the poor" in Jerusalem, quite different to the portrait in Acts of Paul like a submissive servant obeying instructions relayed to him by messenger. 1Corinthians, 2Corinthians and Romans also tell us that Paul raised a collection to assist the poor in Judea, and it is clear that he invested considerable personal capital in this effort for the famine relief.

Answer 2

A:Acts of the Apostles is almost universally regarded as a history of the early Christian Church, one which conservative Christians regard as remarkably accurate. However, some scholars point out that Acts contradicts the Epistles of St Paul on significant matters of Church history. Some scholars even note historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Acts, pointing out that it seems to have used the works of the Jewish historian, Josephus, to provide apparent historical context for the accounts that Luke reported. A careful study of Acts shows that it is essentially a story of the apostles Peter and Paul.

In the account of Paul's conversion, Jesus is supposed to have remarked to Paul as he lay on the ground blinded on the road to Damascus, "It hurts you to kick against the goad [or 'pricks']" (Acts 25:14). This is a quotation from the Bacchae by Euripides (d. 406 BCE). The scene has parallels to the play and peculiarly has Jesus quote a Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic ("in the Hebrew language"). Another clear parallel with the Bacchae is when Paul is miraculously released from prison. The source for these accounts, at least, was a play, not true facts. The message of Paul's conversion and his subsequently being taken blind and helpless to Damascus, where he was supposedly taught the gospel, was that Paul was beholden to the disciples for his life, health and knowledge of the gospels. This compares to Paul's own account in the epistles, where there is no suggestion of him being blinded and where he went first to Arabia after his conversion and only then to Damascus (a suddenly blinded man would certainly not travel alone to a distant part of the Near East). Paul says that he was not taught the gospel by any man, but received it by revelation.

Rather than being intended as a true historical record of the early Church, it may be that Acts was intended to diminish Paul's role in the Church and rebut the claims made about him. Acts not only tells about Peter and Paul but draws comparisons between the two apostles in such a way that Peter is always shown to be the more worthy apostle. Whereas Paul, in his own epistles, says that he began the mission to the gentiles, Acts says that Paul began to preach to the Jews, with limited success, and only preached to the gentiles after Peter obtained approval from the Jerusalem Council for the gentiles to be converted. In Acts each performed remarkably comparable miracles, but Peter's were always greater than Paul's and their performance achieved more for the Church. Peter really escaped from the prison, with the actual help of an angel. Paul was released by an earthquake that may or may not have been of divine origin, but failed to make good his escape, even if for the best of motives. Paul was always less significant than he appears to be in his own epistles. It seems that the author of Acts wished to ensure that credit for the expansion of Christianity among the gentile population should not go to Paul.

As for the historicity of Acts of the Apostles, Ranke-Heinemann (Putting Away Childish Things) says that the whole book is a work of Propaganda aimed at Gentile Christians and Gentiles who have not yet become Christians. A similar view is expressed by Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) who, for example, says that we can never verify the martyrdom or even existence of Stephen, the first martyr according to Acts.

Answer 3

Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it. It defends the Christian faith as protected because some thought of it as a sect of the Jewish faith.

Answer 4

Until the twentieth century, most New Testament scholars believed that Acts of the Apostles actually was a history of events that occurred in the early years of Christianity.

Acts of the Apostles can be seen more as a literary comparison of the Apostles Peter and Paul, with Peter portrayed in each comparison as the more worthy apostle.