Does Acts Contain Actual Eyewitness Accounts? | Steve Walton

Does the Book of Acts really preserve accurate eyewitness testimonies? 

In this episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture, Daniel Mikkelsen is joined by Steve Walton—pastor, New Testament scholar, and specialist on the Book of Acts—for a wide-ranging conversation about whether Acts contains evidence of eyewitness accounts.

From the importance of Greek for reading Acts, to eyewitness testimony, historical accuracy, miracles, and the mysterious “we” sections, Steve Walton explains what makes Acts unlike any other New Testament book and why it matters today.

Whether you’re curious about how reliable Acts is as history, or interested in how biblical languages open up new insights, this episode explores the unique witness of Acts and what it means for Christians seeking to follow Christ today.

Don’t Miss the Next Episode:
A conversation with Tyler Hoagland on how early Christians understood the Kingdom of God.

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Chapters:
00:00 – Coming Up...
01:04 – Meet Steve Walton: Scholar of the Book of Acts and Pastor
03:41 – Why Learning Greek Changes How You Read Scripture
06:48 – Greek Word Order: How Meaning Hides in Plain Sight
09:47 – Acts in Greek: When Translations Miss the Point
18:42 – Discovering Acts: How Steve’s Journey Began
23:12 – Why Acts is Unlike Any Other New Testament Book
26:20 – Does Acts Contain Any Evidence of Eyewitness Testimony?
36:11 – Can Acts Be Trusted as History?
45:37 – “Witness” Language: Fact, History, or Theology?
54:17 – What on Earth is Verisimilitude (and Why It Matters in Acts)?
58:06 – Miracles in Acts: Belief, Worldview, and Evidence
01:03:55 – The “We” Sections: Eyewitness or Device?
01:10:51 – What Acts Teaches Us for Following Christ Today

Music Credits:
Music from #Uppbeat
🔗 https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/aspire

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Podcast Keywords:
biblical languages, New Testament, Old Testament, Christ, bible study,  Relationship with God, learn biblical languages, Biblical Theology, Christianity, Covenants, New covenant, old covenant, language acquisition, Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew.

Transcript

0:00

It's clear, I think, that Luke thinks eyewitness testimony is really important. From the beginning of his Gospel, he talks about having consulted the eyewitnesses. Rhoda the maid in Acts chapter 12. She's named just once, halfway through the story of Peter's escape from prison. Who would have named the little episode about him knocking at the door? Only Rhoda. So this may lead me to a question like, because in scholarship it's contested whether acts such as trustworthy historical documents. So how can we even determine whether these eyewitness accounts and acts are trustworthy? With Acts there's a lot we can check because Luke generally gets his world right. The wee sections are really interesting. I sat down and did the maths fairly recently, about six or seven months in total out of the 10 to 12 years. Well, they do contain some of the most detailed stories in Acts God, Oman was pressing you, what would you reply to him? Welcome back to another episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture, brought to you by NT Greek Tutoring, the place for personalized Greek learning in your spare time. I'm your host, Daniel Mikkelsen, the founder of NT Greek Tutoring and a PhD candidate in New Testament at the University of Edinburgh. And this podcast exists to make gyms from biblical studies accessible to everyday Christians and show how the biblical languages opens up scripture. Our aim is to increase your love for God and His word so that we become more joyful witnesses for His mission. And today I'm honored to be joined by Steve Walton. who is the senior research fellow at Trinity College Bristol. Before that, he was the professor of New Testament at St. Mary's University in Twickenham. And Steve is also an ordained Anglican minister. He has a wide interest in New Testament studies, which also shows in his extensive publications of books, edited books, chapters, and journal articles on areas from Paul, the Gospels, textual criticism, Acts, and then I probably forgot something. m Recently has been writing on a commentary on Acts for the Word Biblical Commentary series of which the first of the three volumes has been published in on Acts chapter 1 until 9.42 earlier this year and it is also Acts that we'll be talking about in this particular episode specifically the evidence of eyewitness account in Acts. So if you want to know more about that then stick around. I for one am very excited about it, discuss this in more detail. And I had the privilege to hear Steve presenting oh twice on very interesting topics in Acts. First at BNTS last year, the British New Testament Society, and more recently at the Tyndale Fellowship Conference on the topic that we will actually be discussing today on the podcast and this is also where we met in person, and it's such a great pleasure and privilege to have you on the podcast, Steve. Thank you for wanting to join me on the podcast. Welcome here. Thank you, it's lovely to be here. Wonderful. Anything else you want to add before we jump into some questions? Well, the things you may not know about me is that I'm a retired international volleyball referee um and I'm the co-owner of Flora, who's a border terrier, with my wife, Allie, who's a retired Anglican minister. Mmm. Yes. Very good. I didn't know that. I think I may have heard that you had been a volleyball referee. Yes, should we dive into the questions? Very good. So how did you get into the study of biblical languages? Well, I learned my Greek and Hebrew when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, when I was training to be ordained, um and studied them there and just got very excited about working with the New Testament and particularly with the Greek text. So my own engagement with Greek then grew, partly through PhD work myself. And partly through teaching, there's actually nothing better for clarifying your own thinking to have to explain it to someone else. And that's been a major way my understanding of Greek's grown. Hmm. Yes, that's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, I think there is like, if you want to understand it, then teach it. Yep. Yep, exactly. Yeah, yeah. But, like, how did you experience how to, like, know the biblical languages and how they've opened up scripture for you? As well as being a scholar, I'm a pastor and m preaching has been one of the places where time after time after time reading the original has opened up things that I wouldn't have guessed were there from reading the English versions. I habitually read 10 or 20 English versions when I preach on a text. Hmm. I always like to go back to the original because that just... There are things that you don't pick up. In Greek, word order often shows you emphasis in the text that you wouldn't guess. In English, we know what word order is because it goes, the subject comes first, the verb comes next, the object of the verb comes next, the indirect object of the verb comes after that. In Greek, as you know, you can put words in almost any order, but what you put up front is the place of emphasis. And that sort of thing shows you things about what the writer's saying that you might well miss otherwise. So it's been preaching and teaching students, particularly second and third year Greek text students, as they've started, as they've got to grips with the nitty gritty of how verbs work, how nouns work and so on. Then helping them to recognise what the author's doing with the way they order the text and the choices of words they make and the choices of words. Choice implies meaning is one of the things that people say a lot about languages. It's often interesting to notice the word they haven't used as well as the word they have used for something because there's a choice involved and it's not an accident that they've done it that way. Yeah, I think it's very helpful is to say that choice implies meaning. I Steve Runge uses that in his Discord grammar, oh where he actually opposes a trend that think have been popular within some Greek studies that Greek word order is almost random. Yes. Yeah, but I think it's correct what Steve is saying as what you're saying. em Essentially, you had the same name, But I guess the point here is that, as you're pointing out, that when you choose something, then you mean something specifically by it. Yes, yes. And if, as you know, the two major past tenses in Greek are the aorist and the imperfect. And the imperfect implies you're looking at an action that's in process of happening, whereas in the aorist you're looking at an action as a whole. Now, that doesn't mean the author is necessarily describing what happens. It's about the perspective the author has on something. Does he want you to recognise that this is something in process of happening? That happens in, for instance, the summaries in the Book of Acts at the end of chapter two and the end of chapter four, where he summarises events and he uses imperfects to say, this is typical of the stuff they were doing over that period of time. Whereas when Paul sets out on a journey, It's often an aorist because it's just one particular event that he's showing you. It's kind of like a snapshot of that event as a whole, rather than with the imperfect. um It's like watching little video. Hmm. Yeah, I think that's that's a very helpful way of like describing the two because I found with my students that they sometimes struggle a little bit with the aorist. Like, what is this? What is going on here? Because Yeah, yeah. The English past simple, he said, isn't really like the aorist. Although that's often we often use the English past simple to translate it. But it's it's looking at events as a whole. Exactly. and then sometimes how do we distinguish between when we translate, for example, how do we think really distinguish between an imperfect and an aorist? It can be very hard for especially new Greek learners to grasp that reality. yeah, yeah. This is why it's worth knowing Greek so you can look at it for yourself. Exactly. Yeah, do you have some more specific examples of how you've experienced God's Word opening up to you that wasn't in the translation? let me give you a couple of examples from the first volume of my commentary. In Acts 2.46, the NRSV updated version translates day by day as they spent much time in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts. The NIV has every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. And the impression you get from both of those versions is they only ate together at home. And the Greek does not say that. uh The word for eating um is that they ate food. And that's the main verb of the sentence. And they... So they ate food with glad and sincere hearts is the main part of the sentence. There are then two participle clauses, day by day meeting together in the temple and breaking bread in homes. So those two participle clauses are qualifying the they ate together, they ate food together with glad and sincere hearts. So they were eating together both in the temple and in their homes. Now that's not terribly surprising because of course Jewish pilgrims would come and bring an animal or a bird to offer in sacrifice and they would get part of it back to eat and they would sit and eat in the temple courts. So eating in the temple courts isn't terribly unusual but it does suggest that the earliest Part of the earliest Christians' evangelism was as they ate together, other people might join them and overhear their teaching, overhear their speaking as they sat together at meals with them and came to faith that way. So I think that gives you a more interesting, it's a more interesting picture of their mission, but I think it's also more accurate picture that it's not simply that they kind of went out and found people. but people were attracted to this group that met in the temple. That's one. Another example is in chapter six, where the group appoint the seven to look after the Greek-speaking widows, because there's a dispute between the Hebrew-speaking widows and the Greek-speaking widows. And what they do is the apostles say, OK, we mustn't do this because that will stop us doing the ministry of the word and prayer that's our priority. So you guys, the community, choose seven people, choose seven men to do this. And they do. And verses five and six of chapter six, here's the NIV. Peter's proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, Philip, Procarus, Niconore, Timon, Parmenes and Nicholas from Antioch. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. The picture there is that the group choose the seven, they present them to the apostles, the apostles then commissioned them by laying hands on and praying. The NRSV updated does exactly the same thing. They had these men stand before the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. That isn't what the Greek says. The group who choose are the group who lay hands. In the Greek grammar, they chose, this pleases the community, and they chose, Stephen, et cetera. they presented them to the apostles and they prayed and laid hands on them. I don't think the they has changed. You're getting a picture of the whole community forming kind of like a scrum and laying hands on them and commissioning them. Now that's symbolic of the way that leadership in the early community is not dictatorship. The apostles have said to the community, you choose these seven. Luke hasn't told us about the mechanism and we'd love to know, but Luke has shown us that it's the community in whom the Spirit dwells who make the decision. And my reading of verse six is that it's actually the community who commissioned them by laying hands on them and praying for them. With the apostles standing there, So the apostles would have been part of this, but it's not just the apostles. So it's not a sort of, it's not delegation from the apostles downwards, it's delegation upwards from the community. So when I think when you read the text carefully, you discover the picture isn't the picture we've got. And that's very different to the way we think of commissioning today. Hmm. These seven have been seen as the predecessors of deacons in the church and they're never actually called deacons, although the verb, διακονέω (diakoneō), is to serve, from which we get the word deacon is there. But it's not that it's kind of like the bishop lays hands on them, the apostles lay hands on them to commission them. It's the community. So those, I think, are two really quite interesting examples where A careful reading of the text gives you different picture of what's actually going on. Hmm. Yeah, I think this is helpful how you can see how... Yeah, the second example is that how the subject changed, and it might not necessarily been intentional from the translators to do it, but the Greek shows that more clearly, how that works. I think it betrays the translator's assumptions about what's going on. Hmm. Yeah. And I think it's important to note that when in Greek, a subject change is usually signaled. So it signals from like, I think it's a like, an example. I have an example from Paul where that happens. So when you're looking at how, what the body is that is laid in the tomb, like who's sewn and then is raised in 1 Corinthians 15.42, I think it is, if I remember correctly from the top of my head. It talks about it is sewn in in corruption and raised in glory and so on. We have the same verb coming, two verbs coming four to three times, four times in the text. And some commentators assume that it's not the same body that is sown, that is raised, but grammatically that's impossible. Because if it had to be like, I think James Ware had pointed that out really well in an article he published in JBL a few years ago, where he says that if that was the case, if it was two different bodies, there should have been a ὁ(ho) sort of like, or τίς (tis) or something like that, included before the second verb, because then we know: it's not the same. And that should happen every time the subjects change. And so that was my point about like, that Greek does have like, it usually signals if the subject change. in a specific way, either by indicating it with a pronoun or by changing the person of the verb. Yes, yes. So I just wanted to add to your point on that remark. Yeah. So, but maybe we should like transition into talking a little bit more about like Acts. I think it would be interesting for people to know that before we turn to the like topic of eyewitnesses, why you actually were first of all became interested in studying Acts. Learning New Testament Greek can be a real challenge. If that's been your experience, I've put together a free PDF guide called Why Learning Greek Could Be a Struggle and How to Move Forward. Inside you'll find the most common pitfalls and my simple three step framework to help you start reading Greek with more confidence. Get your free copy today by clicking the link in the description below or the pinned comment. Now back to the episode. before we turn to the like topic of eyewitnesses, why you actually were first of all became interested in studying Acts. Yeah, in my first term in Cambridge, I wrote an essay for Charlie Moule, C. F. D. Moule, everyone knew him as Charlie, uh about the major theological emphases of Luke. And as I was reading for the essay, I discovered that there was a major debate about whether the portrait of Paul in Acts is like the portrait of Paul in the letters. and particularly German scholarship, Vielhauer, Conzelmann, and Haenchen took a very negative view of that. And I really wasn't convinced by that at all, because it seemed to me there were some great similarities, and of course differences of emphasis between the Pauline letters and Acts. I did that in my first term of my undergraduate studies and that became an interest that I pursued. So I wrote an undergraduate dissertation in that area and then later on my doctorate was on that area because I worked on the speech of the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20 which is the only time Paul addressed us a believing community. in the Book of Acts. So it's the most letter-like situation in the Book of Acts. The other times Paul is either speaking to people who not yet believers, Christian, Jewish or not, or in a courtroom scene. And neither of those alike writing to the Thessalonians or the Galatians. So that letter, that speech is critical. And I compared it with First Thessalonians because nobody in scholarship doubts that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians. So it provided a solid database and found that there were lots of similarities in vocabulary and ideas, sometimes quite unusual words. So that was the kind of story of how I got into Acts. And then soon after I finished the PhD, uh Ralph Martin, who was then the editor of the New Testament series of the Word Biblical Commentary, approached me and said, would you be interested in writing? And I thought about it, took advice and said, yes. So that's been the kind of journey. Yeah. Very good. Very good. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. I think it even still is a very contentious subject about Acts and Paul and maybe even more so now in the Anglo-Saxon world. em Yeah, I think it's now a different debate to what it was in the 1950s and 60s because the new perspective on Paul's happened. And the picture of Paul that Vielhauer, Conzelmann, and Haenchen were working with was a classic old perspective, traditional Lutheran view of Paul. And people's understanding of Paul has changed. There's a massive range of views about Paul. So if I were doing the thesis now, I'd have to do it in very different way. So I'm glad I'm not doing it now, because it was tough enough then. Yes, sure. Sure, I can understand that. Yeah, yeah. So, but... Another question that might be sort of, it might be an obvious question for some is why does it seem like Acts stands out amongst the New Testament writings? Acts is unique. It's the only book that tells the story of the early Christians and the growth of the believing community. So it's the bridge between the Gospels and the letters. And it's interesting that in the New Testament canon, in the manuscripts we've got and in the canon lists we've got, Acts is never next door to Luke, which from Our point of view is surprising because we always associate Luke and Acts together because they're by the same author. But the earliest Christians who put manuscripts together and canon lists together thought of the fourfold gospel as belonging together. Then came Acts and then came the letters. And interestingly, in many manuscripts, it's the Catholic letters that come next. And then Paul's. One of the interesting things with the Tyndale House Greek New Testament is they followed that order and the Nestle-Ollant 29th edition which is coming next year will be doing the same. um So we're going to have to get used to Romans not following straight after Acts in our Greek New Testaments. um But I think that's because in Acts Peter comes before Paul. So you put the Petrine letters, Johannine letters. all there before you go onto the Pauline, although most scholars take the view that the Pauline letters are actually the oldest part of the New Testament we have. Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Point is that like how the Catholic epistles are put earlier. And then you go through like the Pauline Corpus and then Hebrews and then Revelation. Yeah. it's very interesting. mean, I take my Tyndale House Greek New Testament to church to follow the readings and I've kind of got used to doing it that way. Although it's a different order to the order I'm used to, but when the new Nestle-Aland comes next year, we'll all have to get used to it. I have my copyright here of the Tyndale House. I use that every day. So I'm also after some time, gotten used to it. It is very interesting perspective on how the manuscript... yeah, it does reflect what many of the earliest manuscripts have. So Codex Sinaiticus which sits in the British Library, does things that way. Yeah, and most canon lists, as you said, m and other codices later as well. Yes, Yeah. Yeah. In a previous episode on the podcast, had James Morgan on who pointed out that the eyewitness testimonies, as generally speaking, were very important to ancient historical writers, at least as important as they are today. So the question is, does Acts actually contain any eyewitness testimony? Yeah, it's clear, I think, that Luke thinks eyewitness testimony is really important. From the beginning of his gospel, the beginning of Luke's gospel, he talks about having consulted the eyewitnesses and the ministers of the word. And people debate whether that's one group or two. I am inclined to think it's two. So Luke values eyewitness testimony, which As James will have said too, is right in line with how ancient historians work. Our model of historians, which is they go off into dusty libraries and read, read letters and books and all sorts of things, and then write a book, is not how the ancient authors would have done it. They would have wanted either to be there themselves or to have interviewed people who were there themselves. So they got eye and ear witness testimony for what went on. And so when Luke has Jesus say in Acts 1.8, you will be my witnesses, that's a crucial moment because he's saying to the group who've been with him throughout his ministry, your job now is to give testimony to what you've seen and heard. And that fits with the role of the 12 in Acts 2.42. One of the key characteristics of the early Christian community is the teaching of the apostles. So because they have a unique position, before the gospels were written, before we had access to written testimony to Jesus, oral testimony was all they had. And that's why in chapter one of Acts, replacing Judas with somebody who's been there and and Luke spells out the qualifications from the baptism of John through to see his resurrection. So it needs to be somebody who can give testimony. And that's why I think in the incident in Acts 6 that we looked at a few minutes ago, when the apostles are debating what to do um about this dispute over daily food provision, they say we shouldn't give up the ministry of the word because they have a distinct and unique place. So those signals all point to eyewitness testimony. In the cases I've talked about, eyewitness testimony to the events of Jesus' life, teaching, death and resurrection and ascension. But I then want to argue, and I think we're going to talk about this in a minute, that There's also eyewitness testimony to the events that go on within acts. Hmm. Yeah, and we might want to dive into that. what are some clear eyewitness accounts in Acts? Yeah, two of them, I think, are fairly clear. One is the stories of Philip in Acts chapter eight. We get the two stories about Philip. He goes to Samaria and people come to faith and then Peter and John come down from Jerusalem and the spirit falls on them. And he meets this Ethiopian eunuch in the desert in verses 26 to 40. There are two stories about Philip. Where did Luke get those from? Well, in Acts 21, the we-character is at Philip's home. And Luke tells us in Acts that he's now got four daughters who prophesy and they had a meal together. So the picture I have in my head, which Adolf von Harnack suggested at least 100 years ago is that they were sitting around the dinner table reclining probably and Philip said: Have I ever told you about the extraordinary things the Lord did with me? And you can see his girls going, oh, dad, not the missionary stories again. And I don't know if people rolled their eyes in the first century, but I would think they might have done at that point. But at that point, I think that's where Luke got the stories from. He heard Philip talk about them. and put them in what we call Acts chapter 8. So that's one. The other one is one of the insights Richard Bauckham's work on the Gospels in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses has is that sometimes individuals are named and there's no other reason for naming them than to say this is the person who is the ultimate story for this source. So Bartimaeus in Mark's Gospel whom Jesus heals from blind is named, Bauckham argues, because that's where Mark got the story from. And there are levels of detail in the story that make it sound like eyewitnesses. The fact that he had to cry out twice is one thing, for instance. Now, think of Rhoda the maid in Acts chapter 12, verse 13. She's named just once and She's named halfway through the story of Peter's escape from prison. He's in prison awaiting execution in the first half of Acts 12. And the church have gathered to pray at Mary's house. We know Mary had got a decent sized house because it says there was a porch on the front of it. And you only have a porch if you've got a posh house. and Peter comes he knocks on the door, and Rhoda dashes out from the prayer meeting to answer the door, and then goes back and says, it's Peter. And they say, don't be ridiculous. uh It's his ghost, it's a spirit. And Peter, bless him, keeps hammering at the door. uh This is the middle of the night when he's escaped from prison. He keeps hammering at the door and Rhoda goes back and lets him in and they all say, this is amazing. And Rhoda's very excited because when she's heard Peter's voice first time, she's filled with joy. Now that suggests a bunch of things, one of which is that Rhoda is part of the believing community, although she's a servant, quite possibly a slave. in Mary's household. But the other is she's the only one who knows the whole story because when Peter gets in the room, he explains how he got out of jail, which Acts records in the bit of the story before he knocks on the door. Who would have known that? Well, Rhoda would. I the other people in the room would too. But who would have known the little episode about him knocking at the door? Only Rhoda. So Rhoda makes sense because she's heard Peter tell the story of the jailbreak. She's been at the doorway and gone back and said this to the group and she's gone back and then let him in. She's been there in the room as Peter tells the story. And then she's heard Peter say, send a message to James about this, I need to get out of town because it's too dangerous for me to stick around. So it makes perfect sense to me that Rhoda would be the eyewitnesses, the eyewitness on whom Luke has drawn in gathering that story. And I would think it's likely that he gathered it during the two years that Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea Maritima. which happens later on in Acts, because the we-character arrives in town with Paul and then the we-character travels on the sea voyage to Rome with Paul. So the we-character has had a couple of years to wander around Palestine gathering information. And I think that's where he gathered the stories from the early part of Acts. met Rhoda. If I were Rhoda, I would be telling people that story for the rest of my life because it's such an amazing story. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, and the thing that she's so excited she forgets to open the door. Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, it's very, epic is probably a modern term for that. em It's also an ancient term, for other reasons. So this may lead into a question like, because in scholarship, some people contest, it's contested whether Acts is a trustworthy historical document. Hmm can we even determine whether these eyewitness accountants in Acts are actually trustworthy? Well, let me say two things. One is that in terms of the general plausibility, we've got evidence from Paul's letters that churches learn about what goes on in other churches. So, for instance, in 1 Thessalonians 1, 7 and 8, Paul, Titus, and Timothy say that the Thessalonians believers are examples to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. And that means that they have told the Macedonian and Achaian believers up in Greece and northern Greece what was going on in Thessalonica. And that's really interesting. Similarly, 2.14–15 in 1 Thessalonians, They can speak of the Thessalonian believers becoming imitators of the Judean believers who were persecuted by their fellow countrymen. Now, again, that's implying stories about churches being taught to other churches. You can see similar things in 2 Thessalonians, 2 Corinthians. So Paul can use the example of the Macedonian assemblies to... appeal to the Corinthians to say, look, they gave incredibly generously in 2 Corinthians that is. um Here's an example for you guys, because they gave out of their poverty, they gave more than they could afford. So Paul's using stories and passing on stories um about other churches. So it's highly likely that that happened. Ward Gask puts it this way, he says, In the Pauline churches, there was preaching about the missionary experience of the apostles and about the establishment of churches and the spiritual triumphs of the various churches were used for paracletic and paranetic purposes. the evidence of the letters suggests it's highly likely that stories about the early Christians circulated. The other is to pick up the criteria that Rainer Riesner and Richard Bauckham use for assessing the trustworthiness of the gospels and the transmission of the gospel tradition. And Riesner particularly draws on a scholar called Ruth Finnegan, who's worked on oral poetry in non-literary societies. And she argues that if you get a careful preservation of teaching, then it's likely if three things were going on, if the teachers thought to be divinely inspired, if the oral text was in a fixed form like poetry, and that there was a group trained to pass the material. And that sort of thing clearly goes on in the gospels. But I think you can also apply it to Acts. So, Bauckham argues that if we generally treat eyewitnesses testimony receptively rather than skeptically. In a courtroom, that's where you've got to give eyewitness testimony. So trusting testimony is indispensable, says Bolkham, to historiography. You simply can't do historiography if you're consistently skeptical. And he's looked at some work by psychologists and argues that eight of the factors they talk about are relevant. Events that are unusual or unique are likely to be well remembered, like Rhoda's story. The importance for the rememberer means that memory is likely to be reliable. So the events of Pentecost in Acts 2, which are world-changing events, fit the bill well. Thirdly, if the rememberer has an emotional involvement, Peter's prison escape is a great example. That's likely to be well remembered. Fourthly, if there's vivid imagery, then that's often a marker of um accurate recollection. Poor old Peter having to hammer on the door of Mary's house to be let in. That's just a vivid detail, isn't it? Or the imagery of the spirit at Pentecost, fire, wind, strange languages. Hmm. Fifthly, irrelevant details. Now, they're relatively rare in Acts. But taking bail from Jason in Acts 17.8 is just an odd thing. Why would you say this unless, as I think, Jason is your source there? And Colin Hemer's work provided us with a mass of information like that. um In terms of recent memories, whether it's told from a participant's point of view, rather than outside observers point of view, that again is likely to be reliable. The we-character is present for the first half of the Philippi story in Act 16. And it's through the we-character's eyes that we see the story when Lydia becomes a Christian. and they start to meet at her home. After Paul's delivered the slave girl who's demonised, the we-character doesn't seem to be present because it's suddenly all about Paul and Silas and the we-character isn't there. So at that point, we've lost the we-character's testimony. Now, maybe we're hearing Paul or Silas' view as they're thrown into prison. They have the earthquake. They lead the jailer to faith in Jesus. They deal with the magistrates. And then we pop up again in verse 40 and we're back in Lydia's house. So I think there's evidence that you've got that sort of participant perspective. Seventhly, the absence of dating information isn't a negative argument. For instance, in John's Gospel, Bauckham links the events in John, which are for specific Jewish festivals, and he thinks that that link is a positive sign. But the absence of that sort of information isn't necessarily so. But recalling a time of day could be interesting. For instance, think of when Peter and John Meet the man who has a disability of his legs at the beautiful gate. Luke says it's at the third hour. When Cornelius is praying in Acts 10, he's praying at the third hour. Now that's the time of afternoon prayers. So it's a very specific time. Peter in Joppa, when he has this bizarre vision of the sheet coming down from heaven, is praying about noon and Bauckham suggests that specific times are actually often signals of something well remembered. And then of course frequent retelling would preserve a memory and hold it accurately. So the particular role of the 12 in keeping teaching the stories of Jesus is an example of that and the evidence that I pointed to in the letters where people are telling stories about one church to another. And the more they did that, obviously, the more the stories would be put into a particular shape that was memorable and easy to pass on. So those sorts of things seem to me to be general factors that indicate that there is a a broad case for the trustworthiness of the traditions that we're hearing in Acts. Obviously, that then means you've then got to look in detail at individual points, but there are a lot of those, I think. Yeah, that's very helpful, like pointing out these specific factors that we know from elsewhere that is helping to preserve things accurately and faithfully. I was wondering how the language of μάρτυς (martys) and μαρτυρέω (matyreo), so like 'a witness' and 'to testify', plays into how trustworthy acts is. As you know, uh James P Ware, is arguing that this language is a language of fact and history rather than like tellings and things that are not true. And what are your thoughts? I think Ware right that the language of witness, that word group, occurs 29 times in the Greek text of Acts, which is pretty remarkable. A scholar of an earlier generation, a Canadian scholar called Allison Trites, who in spite of the name is a man, when you spell Allison with a double L, it's a man's name apparently. uh Al Trites did a study for his PhD on the concept of witness across the New Testament. It's published in the SMTS monograph series from Cambridge and it's a fine piece of work but one of the things he does is show that μάρτυς (martus), μαρτυρέω (martireo) is courtroom language and what's happening is it's being used by analogy in the book of Acts. to say the same kind of rigor is involved in telling the stories as if you were on trial in a courtroom. So yes, I do think that language is relevant. Hmm, yeah, very good. Yeah. Yeah, I also checked around in it like when I was like looking for these questions and it's very interesting that for the most part is always the disciples like the 12 that is referred to as like μαρτυρέω (martireo). So μάρτυς (martus) Or to have like testified so testified can be used in different ways. That's a little bit more flexibly language linguistically depending on context Yes. definitely something to do with how it's very poignant that it's not using that language about other people who we clearly don't know if they were eyewitnesses. em But that is where I think Paul is becoming interesting, because he describes in... When he is retelling his conversion story in Acts 22, he... is referring in a second person about himself. I think it is that he should be a witness. uh Yes. Yeah, so how does he fit into this? He's really interesting because he's not one of the primary witnesses. There's a really interesting passage in when he speaks in Presidium Antioch in Acts 13. He speaks about, many days Jesus appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem and they are now his witnesses to the people, which is really interesting because he's not saying we, he's saying they. He's drawing a distinction between himself and the primary eyewitnesses. And I think that's because he wasn't himself an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry. I think the only person who's argued that recently is Stan Porter, who thinks Paul did know Jesus in the flesh. uh So he's distinguishing himself from those people. Yes. He's obviously insistent, and the letters show us this, ah that he himself has seen Jesus our Lord. And Luke doesn't disagree with that because three times over in chapter 9, through Luke's voice, and then in chapters 22 and 26 through Paul's voice, we hear him tell the story of meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus. So he is a witness of the exalted Jesus. Mmm. Yeah. not an eyewitness of the earthly ministry of Jesus. So that's the distinction I draw as the kind of testimony he's able to give. Yeah, exactly. I think it also, the language used also, I think, points to that it cannot be like a visionary appearance he had experienced. You've actually met Jesus in a way that a vision couldn't qualify. Yeah, it's not that Jesus has vanished from the scene at his ascension. It's that Jesus is still active, but he's active from heaven. He's now at the Father's right side and he's active from there. So, twice within chapter 9 that happens. Once with Paul when he appears to him. The other is in 934 when Peter says, Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. So it's not like in chapter three where it's the name of Jesus that's used, it's Jesus himself heals Aeneas. So Jesus himself is still active, but he's not doing it from earth anymore, he's doing it from heaven. Yeah, and that's why I think that Paul is the only exception. That when he meets him on the road to Damascus, he appears to him in the flesh. yeah, I mean Stephen and Philip are both called witnesses too and it's hard, we just don't have the information about whether they were eyewitnesses or Jesus' ministry. They may have been, they may not have been, but they're called witnesses, which is the same word as is used for Paul. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, do you remember where they're called witnesses? Paul speaks about Stephen as a witness in one of his speeches. Let's see. It's in 26, I think, isn't it? Let me just find it. This is a really good question. I just don't have the references in my head. That's all right. It was also sort of a question that I just came up with, because I looked and added myself and I wasn't able to find em that, but maybe I did it because I didn't look carefully enough. em So that's why it would be interesting to see the reference as well. 22.20. um Paul speaks about the blood of your witness Stephen was shed and I was standing by approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him. So he's called a witness there. Hmm. Yeah, yeah. And Philip um gives testimony. um Let's see, where is that? No, I I'm not quickly finding it. But there's a really interesting essay by Peter Bolt about witness in Acts, which is in the collection on the theology of Acts by Howard Marshall and David Peterson. in which he looks at how the language of witness is used. And it's used differently to, for instance, 1 Peter, where Peter talks about always being ready to give an answer to those who ask you. Witnesses there being conceived as something that any Christian can do, whereas testimony in Acts seems to be very specific as to who are regarded as witnesses. um which includes the 12 but also includes Steve and Paul and so on. Yes, I think that's very interesting and that may be something that could be investigated even further. But I think that another question we might want to highlight here is that I think a lot of people talk about verisimilitudes em and how they play into determining the validity of eyewitness accounts in Acts. em First of all, maybe it would be helpful for people to explain what verisimilitude actually are. Yes, but verisimilitude is about, is the picture I'm seeing plausible? So, and with Acts, there's a lot we can check in that respect, because Luke generally gets his world right. He uses titles of local officials accurately. Cyprus in chapter 13 is a proconsular province with the proconsul resident at Paphos. We've got inscriptional material that shows us that. When you travel in 16.1, when you travel from the Cilician gates in the east of Turkey today over land, then you come to Derby and then Lystra, not the other way round, and it gets that right. In 18.12, Galio is the proconsul of Achaia. Now we've got a letter that Gallio wrote to his brother that attests to this and we know that Achaia had a proconsul who was resident in Corinth, which was its capital, between 27 BC and AD 15 and then there was a gap until AD 44 onwards. Paul's in Corinth about AD 51-52. So it fits really well, does the description for the period. Ananias, the high priest in 23.2 is the right person for that date. To address a man of equestrian rank, roughly the equivalent of a British knighthood, um you use κράτιστε, and that's exactly the word Paul uses in 24.3. um to such a man. On Malta in Acts 28.7, the leader of the island, the proconsul, is actually known as the Protoss, the first man of the island. And again, Luke gets that right. So, Colin Hemer has written a very long book showing as evidence of Luke getting his world right, getting details right that we know from other sources. So, so he does verisimilitude extremely well. The difference, of course, is that if you and I were going to research the Reformation in England, we could go to a library and read a ton of books, learn about the period and then write something with good, verisimilitude. The Wolf Hall books are a good example of that. But That wasn't, that sort of resource wasn't available to Luke. He's got to have had either eyewitness testimony or he's been there himself, which the we-character seems to be on quite a number of occasions. So it looks as though this is, he's portraying the ancient setting well because he's got good, accurate testimony to it. Hmm, yeah, that's very helpful. And this is slightly off topic, but I feel like it's an interesting question in regards to this is how does the verisimilitudes play into the accounts of miracles in Acts? that's much harder. Because I think people's attitudes to miracles in Scripture are part of a larger question of what their worldview is. um And I think C.S. Lewis was right in his little book on miracles, which is terrific little book, in which he argues that the central miracle is whether Jesus rose from the dead. Hmm. If that's believable, then all the others are plausible. And I think Lewis makes a very fine argument for that. And I'm convinced Jesus did rise from the dead. So I don't have a difficulty in thinking the kind of strange things that went on in Acts, like hearing a man at the beautiful gate who'd been disabled. his whole life over 40 years is plausible. But if you don't think, if you think history is a closed continuum of cause and effect, then you're going to have a real problem over that. I think what's happened in the last 30 years or so is that The miracles of Jesus, for instance, have become more accepted in scholarship because scholars have read other examples of weird stuff happening and have thought, well, if people believed it of others, why not of Jesus? So it's become, I think, more accepted that Jesus did remarkable healings. So I don't see why the sorts of things Acts described shouldn't be true. Acts gives us relatively few very specific stories like that. It does speak in general terms about signs and wonders, um which is a phrase from the Old Testament scriptures. And signs and wonders in the Old Testament are particularly associated with the Exodus from Egypt and with the time of Elijah and Elisha in First Kings. they're things that we can identify the kind of things they might be from the Old Testament scriptures. um But I think in terms of verisimilitude, there's not a lot of help. um Obviously, if you get reasonably accurate descriptions of illnesses, then you've got a reasonable reasonable ground for saying, this sounds like somebody who has this particular disability. I examined a thesis a few years ago at Aberdeen where a retired medical lecturer in her seventies had studied theology and then done a PhD. And she looked at stories of healing in Mark, Luke, Acts and Paul. Oh, very interesting. She was looking at it through a doctor's eyes. So it's absolutely fascinating to read her thinking about what kind of illness is being described because on the whole she was very persuaded that the kind of descriptions Mark and Luke and Paul give sound like recognised illnesses. They're not just slightly random descriptions of symptoms. They actually fit. things that we have identified more specifically, some of which were known in ancient times because there were doctors around in the ancient world and Galen's massive medical books show you the diagnostic medicine was around in those days. So I think, but I think that's probably the limit of it, depending on the worldview you have. Yes, I think that's very helpful saying that way. Yeah, I want to know as well, like the Askelpius cult was like extremely popular in the Roman Empire. And if people don't know what Askelpius was, he was the healing god um who may actually even have like been an actual healer on earth at one point. At least that was what was believed. And then he was killed by Zeus for raising people from the dead. And then he was given divinity after that, which is a completely different story. But it tells something about the worldview of people around that time and what they believe was possible through divine intervention as well. And I'm sure they experienced a lot of strange things that we necessarily pay attention to as well. Yeah, although, I mean, the interesting thing is I was in Tanzania last year and in non-Western settings, I think people experience these kinds of things more readily than us Western sceptics. So I think to compare modern Western scepticism with the ancient world is it's like comparing apples and oranges. Hmm. It's better to think of contexts like much of Africa, Asia, South America, which is where Christianity is growing today. Yes, yeah, I think that that's very helpful. So I wanted to like talk about the we accounts a little bit more like in detail. Is that because there are lots of people within scholarship who are very skeptical that they are truly eyewitness accounts. So how can we know? Yeah, it's, it's a bit, the we-sections are really interesting. I sat down and did the maths fairly recently as to how long the we-character is there with Paul. And it's a relatively short period, about six or seven months in total out of the 10 to 12 years of covered by Acts 16 to 28. Now, that means that Luke isn't a constant. companion of Paul, assuming the we-character is there. And they end and start rather abruptly. They just flip into the third person and you think, what happened there? So odd things happen like that. But they do contain some of the most detailed stories in Acts, the Philippi story, which is reported in way more detail than Paul's ministry in Corinth in Acts 18. And we know he was in Corinth for at least 18 months. Or in Ephesus in chapter 19, he was there for over two years. Now, the riot is reported in some detail, but the general events in Ephesus are reported really rather briefly. I mean, there's a huge spectrum of views on the we-stories. um Two that I think are interesting are CK Barrett, who wrote the International Critical Commentary, and he thinks that the first person plural, what would have naturally been seen as a claim to be there. And interestingly, Bart Ehrman agrees with him, but Ehrman thinks Luke is lying and deliberately lying. He's deliberately being deceptive. Now that is rather odd. A biblical analogue, I think, is the sections of Ezra and Nehemiah that are in the first person. Ezra and Nehemiah in the Hebrew canon is one book of the Bible and the author speaks about a number of times, the author of that book has incorporated some material about what I did. And the Old Testament scholars think that there is an Ezra memoir and a Nehemiah memoir written in the first person, but the final author of Ezra Nehemiah is included in the book. Now, it's not impossible, but the author of Acts is doing that. Although it's really hard to distinguish it from the author drawing on his own recollections. in that case, whereas I think with Ezra and Nehemiah the Old Testament scholars seem pretty confident that the books were written up some while after the events. The events of those sections of Acts where the we-character is present are often very memorable. So I'm inclined to think that the we-character is there and I think the we-character links to I decided in Luke 1.3, I decided to write an account. And I wrote in Acts 1.1 in my first volume, Theophilus, I wrote. So the author is putting himself into the story. And I think he's doing the same with the we material. So I think it's plausible that that's what's going on. And the idea that Lukacs is anonymous, which some people claim, I think is quite impossible. Is it really? I just don't think it's plausible that somebody called Theophilus, who I think is a real person, would not know the name of the person who was dedicating a book to him. That would be incredible. So I think that sort of shift into we is very plausible. Yes, the we-character is in the shipwreck on Malta. So how did he keep his written material safe? Well, we've got a gorgeous story from Suetonius of Caesar, holding key documents out of the water while swimming for 200 paces after falling aboard in his biography of Caesar. Hmm. And the shipwreck was planned for by weighing anchors and waiting for dawn and then aiming the ship at the bay. And I think it's also highly likely that Luke, in common with other writers in the ancient world, would have had a duplicate of his notes made and probably left in Caesarea for safekeeping. I think, although there are, it's not. Some things are not straightforward and we have to be creative and imaginative to reconstruct what's going on. I think it's highly plausible that the we character is present in the events and by using the we, the author is making a claim to be present. Yeah, I think that's helpful. Yeah, and if Bart Ehrman was pressing you, what would you reply to him? Well, I'm very glad I've got Joseph Fitzmyer on my side in this argument. Because mean, Ehrman is just, the whole case for the plausibility of the New Testament Ehrman rejects. Which is just, mean, Ehrman lost his faith sadly, having been a believer when he was a younger man. Hmm. And I think with that has gone the rejection of all the supernatural events that go on. So I think there's a bigger issue than just one particular story. I think that's a fair way of putting it. um And I think that the evidence, when you actually look at them, I think it's harder to dismiss it than it is to accept them. Yeah, So we come to a favorite point in the podcast, or at least a tradition in the podcast, where I ask the question, how can each of the listeners and viewers of this particular conversation we have had today apply this in their everyday walk with Christ? em Keep reading Acts, but read it with these sorts of questions in mind um and, you know, scholars who will help you with those sorts of questions. But keep looking for the story of what God is doing in the Book of Acts, because I've become persuaded and my commentary and my other work reflects this, that the central thread of the Book of Acts is not human planning, it's God's action. God is at work and sometimes the believers are dragged along kicking and screaming behind God. uh So when Peter gets back to Jerusalem after meeting Cornelius at the beginning of Acts 11, the response to him is, how dare you go and eat with Gentiles? Hmm. then Peter has to tell them the story to explain what happened and how God sent him there. the conclusion in 11.18 is they say, well, gosh, this means God has also given to the Gentiles the chance to repent, to receive life. That's amazing. um And it's taken some persuading. to do that. But it's the fact that God has done it. at Pentecost, when Peter speaks, um it's interesting that the verb subjects in most of his speech are not Jesus. Jesus is the object of verbs where God does something. God did great miracles through him. God raised him from the dead, um and so on. Hmm. the way that Peter argues that um Jesus is Lord and Messiah is to say, look what God did. And that, for Christians today, I think that points us to the importance of keeping praying and thinking and saying to God, please help me to see and to hear. and to recognise what you're doing so that I can cooperate with you. And that's lovely because it takes the pressure off. It means it's not all down to us because God is generous and gracious and he's at work and we participate with him in his mission. There's an emphasis in contemporary missiology which is called missio dei, the mission of God. And it's the idea that God is at work and our role as believers is to participate in what God's doing. And I think the message of Acts says to us over and over and over, yes, that's what you should be doing. You should be engaging with what God is up to. um And that's true at a personal level, it's true at a church level, and it's true uh in terms of serving our communities and our nations, I think. Hmm. Yeah. I think that's a wonderful way to end, to the encouragement to toggle along with what God is doing. Yeah. Let God lead you in your life and let his mission be a joy for you and know that he is the one doing it and we get to help. Yeah, that's wonderful. Thank you for joining me on the podcast, Steve. You're most welcome. It's been fun. Yeah, thank you. I have enjoyed it very much. And to you guys out there, I'll see you in the next one. But before you go, if you enjoyed this podcast and you want more people to see it, please subscribe and leave a like. It really helps us create more episodes like this one. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.