Thursday, January 23, 2014

Craig Keener's Acts Commentary

I'm going to be posting some material from Craig Keener's commentary on Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012) over the next several days. James Dunn calls Keener's commentary "unbeatable in today's market" on issues of historicity, Richard Bauckham calls it "magisterial" and refers to Keener's "encyclopedic knowledge of ancient literature", and Daniel Marguerat calls it "the most comprehensive commentary on Acts to date", among other endorsements. Once the forthcoming volumes are published, the commentary is supposed to be about 5000 pages long. I've read the entirety of the introduction, which is about 650 pages, but only a small minority of the remainder. The pages are large, and there are a lot of footnotes with small print, so those 650 pages in the introduction might be something like 1000 pages in the average book. I'll only be citing material from the introduction, but even what I cite there has to be highly selective. I'll quote some of Keener's arguments for his conclusions, but I'll often cite his conclusions without the accompanying argumentation.

I recommend that all of you get the commentary and use it at least as a reference work. It would be good to read large portions of it, like the introduction, as well.

I'll be citing some of Keener's comments on the genre of Acts, its historicity, its authorship, and other issues. Those of you who are familiar with Keener's recent book on miracles may recall that his book began as a footnote in his Acts commentary. Though, as we'd expect, the commentary doesn't address the subject of miracles in nearly as much depth as the book on the topic does, the commentary does have a lot of material on miracles, including some not included in the miracles book. One of my posts will be about that material on miracles.

Though I agree with a lot of what Keener says, my citing him doesn't mean that I agree with all of his conclusions or every comment he makes while arguing for a conclusion I accept. For example, Keener argues that Luke published his work in the early 70s. I think it's likely that Luke published in the early to mid 60s instead. I may write a series of posts on the dating of Luke and Acts at some point. There are some comments Keener makes on the subject that I'd like to argue against.

And where Keener is right, his arguments can often be supplemented. Because of the nature of his commentary, he gives little or no attention to some significant factors, at least in his introduction. An example that comes to mind is what he writes about the speeches in Acts. It's useful to consider, as Keener does at length, how ancient historians tended to compose the speeches they included in their historical works. Keener also gives significant attention to other factors involved in evaluating Acts' speeches. But there are some considerations he neglects. For example, we should take into account the implications Divine inspiration has for Luke's recording of speeches and how the early interpreters of Acts viewed Luke's speeches in particular. I don't think Keener gave as much attention to such factors as he should have in his introduction.

But, overall, it's a monumental commentary. It's a tremendous achievement that probably will ensure that Keener will be remembered, appreciated, consulted, and cited in Acts scholarship (and elsewhere) for generations to come.

After this series of posts is completed, I'll put up an index post that will provide one place to access links to every part in the series. As I write further posts related to Keener's commentary, after finishing the present series, I may add links to that index post.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks, Jason. I've placed it on my wish list. :-)

    On a related note, I believe Keener recently updated his book The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. I don't know how extensively revised his work is, but maybe someone else does and can weigh in.

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    1. Thanks! I wasn't aware that he'd updated it. I looked it up on Amazon after seeing your comment, and I've ordered it.

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  2. Yeah I've got the first volume and have been trying to get through it, but it's slow going!

    On a tangential note, Jason, can you point me to any resources, from you or elsewhere, arguing against "Conspiracy theory" used as an alternative to the resurrection to explain the apostolic preaching, i.e. the disciples conspired with other [supposed, on this theory] eyewitnesses to cook up the resurrection which they then preached from Pentecost?

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    1. Thomas,

      There are a lot of problems with the conspiracy theory view of the resurrection. I'll recommend several resources, and you can find others in our archives.

      Keep in mind what implications the theory has for other aspects of early church history. The alleged dishonesty of the early resurrection witnesses can't be isolated from a large network of other factors involved. (For a further discussion of how historical events are often tied together and can't be separated as easily as some people suggest, see here.) For example, the disciples didn't just claim to be eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus, but also performed apparent miracles. Where did they get that ability to perform miracles if they were lying about the resurrection? So, the historicity of apostolic miracles is associated with the trustworthiness of the disciples' resurrection claims. (My current series of posts on Acts is relevant here, such as tomorrow's post on the historicity of the book.)

      Here's an article I wrote about the moral standards of the early Christians in general. While it would be possible for Jesus and his disciples to start a movement so characterized by high ethical standards in spite of the fact that the disciples started the movement largely through dishonesty, the honesty of the disciples makes more sense of the evidence.

      And here's a series of posts I wrote about evidence for the suffering and death of the apostles, including the martyrdom of some of them. Their willingness to suffer for a belief system that had the resurrection as one of its foundational claims suggests that they were sincere in their claims to have seen the resurrected Christ.

      Regarding the possibility that the disciples lied in order to achieve what they considered a greater good, see Appendix VIII in the e-book here.

      Furthermore, the resurrection accounts involve unusual and embarrassing claims unlikely to have been made up by a conspiracy of the disciples. See here.

      Here's a post about the evidence for early acknowledgment of the empty tomb by the Jewish opponents of Christianity.

      And the guard at the tomb is problematic for a conspiracy theory view of the resurrection. For a discussion of some of the evidence for the guard, see here and my comments in the thread here.

      James became a Christian prior to Pentecost (you mentioned Pentecost above), but he seems to have been opposed to Christianity until the time of Jesus' resurrection appearances. See here. Why would he oppose Christianity for so long, including when Jesus was at the height of his popularity prior to the crucifixion, then join a conspiracy to lie about a resurrection just after Jesus had been collectively and officially condemned by the Jewish and Roman authorities and suffered the shame of a crucifixion?

      (continued below)

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    2. (continued from above)

      Paul became a Christian after Pentecost. Why think somebody who was so opposed to Christianity, and suffered so much as a Christian and died as a martyr, had joined a conspiracy to lie about the resurrection? Here's a post I wrote about some of the evidence for Paul's encounter with the risen Jesus and the miracles Paul was able to perform as a result of that encounter.

      Given the evidence we have for Old Testament prophecy fulfillment, we have reason to expect Jesus to fulfill the apparent prophecy of his resurrection in Isaiah 53 and his own prophecies of his resurrection. In other words, the precedent of Old Testament prophecy fulfillment gives us reason to believe in Jesus' resurrection.

      Similarly, Jesus' pre-resurrection miracles add credibility to the resurrection claim.

      And modern Christian miracles done in the name of the resurrected Jesus offer similar evidence.

      The Shroud of Turin seems to be authentic (see my collection of material on the subject here and Dan Porter's blog here; I summarize my argument for the Shroud as evidence of the resurrection in post #14 in Porter's thread here), and I've argued that the Shroud provides us with some evidence of Jesus' resurrection. The Shroud wouldn't have been fabricated by a conspiracy of Jesus' disciples.

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