Why is Acts of the Apostles the continuation of Luke's Gospel?

Answer 1

The Gospel of Luke is the "Good News" that Jesus Christ has come into the world and that he died for our sin and was buried, and that He was resurrected the third day.

The things that occurred inbetween the birth of Jesus and His resurrection is the story of what Jesus did and said while He was on earth.

The Book of acts tell us the story of some of the disciples/apostles and how they continued the work of Jesus Christ after He resurrected and ascended into heaven.

It is a continuing story of the church (the early history).

Answer 2

A:

Unfortunately we do not know who wrote the Gospel of Luke or Acts of the Apostles, in spite of the later attribution to Luke, the physician and companion of Paul. However, we do know they were written around the end of the first century or early in the second century.

We also know that the author of Luke based his Gospel substantially on a copy of Mark's Gospel, written around 70 CE. The author of Luke decided that Mark need improvement, partly by placing it in a historical context and partly by answering constituents' questions about the childhood of Jesus and about what happened after the Resurrection.

The formula of Luke's Gospel was successful and all the evidence is that it became widely used quite quickly, including as an important source for John's Gospel. After only a few years, the author 'Luke' set out to write Acts of the Apostles, again placing the story of the early Church in a historical context. There is good evidence that he used the writings of the first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, as a source of some of his historical references in Acts and possibly also in Luke. He used a similar formula for his preamble and began with the resurrected Jesus, although moving the ascension to heaven some fifty days, from the evening of his resurrection (Luke 24:51) to the time of the Jewish Pentecost (Acts 1:2-9).

Acts of the Apostles appears to have been written primarily to provide evidence that Saint Peter was a greater apostle than was Saint Paul. For example, it attributes several quite similar miracles to the two apostles, but the miracles associated with Peter are always greater than those associated with Paul. Whereas Paul, in his own epistles, describes himself as the apostle who sought preach to the gentiles, Acts portrays Peter as having proposed this.

Answer:In the Acts of the Apostles Luke continues the account of Christianity begun in the Gospel of Luke. In the gospel he tells what Jesus "began both to do and teach"; in Acts, what Jesus continued to do and teach through His Holy Spirit . Both pieces of writing are addressed to the same person - "most excellent Theophilus" and "O Theophilus"

It was considered by the early church fathers -- Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen that Luke was the author of both the Gospel of Luke and Acts. The internal evidence is strong eg in the beginning of Acts, the writer specifically refers to an earlier work, also dedicated to Theophilus. Also the style, compassionate outlook, vocabulary, apologetic emphasis, and other small details tie the two works together.

In the first printed edition of the entire Bible - the polyglot Bible published in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, in 1513--17 - the book of Acts is called, "The Acts of the Apostles of Saint Luke the Evangelist"; and the title of it in the Syriac version is, "the Book of the Acts: that is, the history of the blessed apostles, which my Lord Luke the Evangelist collected for the saints".