Acts. By Richard I. Pervo.
Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009, xxxvi + 810 pp.
The appearance of new
Hermeneia volumes usually generates great interest. Although the choice of
Richard Pervo to write on Acts does not reflect the current mainstream of Acts
scholarship on some significant points, it does call on one known for sustained
engagement with it.
Pervo displays his erudition
lavishly in his treatment of the Greek text, including text-critical comments
and often (though less consistently than Mikeal Parsons) rhetorical
observations; he also provides numerous valuable literary insights.
(Unfortunately,
he sometimes infers that
Luke’s literary patterning is incompatible with the historical substance of the
patterned reports, an inference that cannot hold for ancient historical works
more generally.) As we shall note below, his treatment of the secondcentury
Christian context in which he places the work is unsurpassed (though most
scholars do not agree with his view on that context).
Pervo also treats the major
interpretive questions on various passages, providing numerous secondary
sources for readers interested in pursuing these matters more fully. (The
author index suggests that he cites over a thousand authors; Fitzmyer’s 1998
commentary cites closer to 2000, but most commentators cite far fewer.) While readers
will find many of these resources cited elsewhere, those who use Pervo’s work
need not agree with him on every point to find significant useful information
here.
Pervo does not, like some
scholars in the past, exclude conservative commentators from the conversation.
F. F. Bruce, for example, is treated regularly and respectfully.
Pervo initially seems less
impressed with Ben Witherington but engages him more respectfully as the
commentary progresses. He cites I. Howard Marshall less frequently, but again
cites him respectfully and often agrees. (On p. 131 he exploits Marshall’s
admission of a problem to
state the grounds for his own skepticism.) Sometimes he does express dismay at
some historically conservative readings, including occasionally absurd examples
he chooses to report (e.g. almost mocking William Ramsay’s unjustified
downplaying of the miraculous character of the earthquake in Acts 16:25).
Absurd examples aside, it appears that even the standard conservative respect
for Luke’s historical integrity is as hard for Pervo to comprehend as is his
position for conservative scholars. Nevertheless, Pervo is normally as
respectful a dialogue partner as his perspective allows, and he merits
respectful dialogue in return.
Pervo does provide much that
is useful (though much of what is most useful also appears in other detailed
commentaries by Fitzmyer, Johnson, Witherington, and others). Nevertheless,
because he is especially known for his thesis that Acts is heavily fictitious
and because this approach shapes his treatment of much of Acts, I must devote
more of the review to interacting critically with that position. I should note
initially, however, that Pervo does recognize some material in Acts as
historical. This is especially the case where external sources (such as Paul’s
letters) corroborate points in Acts, and even elsewhere Pervo does not in every
instance take the most skeptical possible position (see e.g. p. 49 on Acts
1:15–23). His skepticism is frequent, however, and related to his view of the work’s
genre.
Pervo is known for arguing
that Acts is a novel. Perhaps influenced by recent discussion of Acts’ genre,
Pervo in the commentary admits that “Acts is a history” (p. 15). (The majority
of Acts scholars hold this view, and this is likely to remain the dominant view
in the near future. All the Acts commentaries currently in preparation of which
I am aware, including those of Eckhard Schnabel, Stanley Porter, and myself,
treat Acts as some form of historiography.) Nevertheless, Pervo so stretches the
definition of “history” that he includes in that category Joseph and Asenath and the Alexander Romance (both of them novels, even if
novels about historical characters). He cites “historical criticism” against
the view that a historical writer should be given the benefit of the doubt, by
which he justifies doubt concerning Luke’s claims that we cannot prove.
Unfortunately, were we to
adopt this method in other ancient histories, we would
know very little about the
ancient world, and the approach seems all the more perverse when historical
evidence (such as, again, Paul’s letters) so often confirms matters in Acts
(such as the sequence of Paul’s mission). Since Luke could not know what external
evidence would survive, should we not assume that he would be roughly as
reliable where we cannot test him as where we can? It is not possible to answer
Pervo piecemeal (especially in a review) because his hermeneutic of suspicion
pervades his commentary, but those who read Acts the way we normally read other
ancient historical works will usually find Pervo’s skeptical approach
untenable.
Because Pervo defines
“history” so broadly, he can accept the historical category while also treating
Acts as novelistic. I believe that he is correct to observe (with Barrett and
others) that Luke, in contrast to the elite ancient historians (whose works
were
more often propagated and
survived), writes on a “popular” level (p. 18). Yet to equate “popular history”
with ancient novels (p. 18) is to ignore the conventional boundaries of genres
in antiquity. While Luke does narrate adventures, he hardly fabricates them; a
brief look at 2 Cor 11:23–33 will indicate that Luke has included only a
fraction of Paul’s actual “adventures.” While Luke mentions signs more often
than Paul does, Paul’s letters indicate that Luke again reports only a fraction
of these (Rom 15:19; 2 Cor 12:12).
Although Pervo notes
Haenchen’s cynicism, Pervo’s own cynicism drips from many pages. Further,
though probably no more than Haenchen, Pervo far more often than most
commentaries editorializes on the value of Luke’s theology or perspectives.
Since most critical readers do not depend on commentators as their ethicists or
political theorists of choice, they may not appreciate the space Pervo expends
offering his opinions. For example, Pervo complains when Luke attributes
jealousy to the persecutors in Acts 5:17 (p. 18). The same, common ancient
motivation for hostility, however, is frequently mentioned in ancient
biographers, historians, and orators.
Pervo includes copious
comparisons with the apocryphal Acts, which his own publications have long used
as genre analogies for Acts. Scholars have pointed out the serious weaknesses
of this analogy, for example, the anachronism of evaluating Acts’ genre based
on later sources that probably imitate it (mostly from the late second and
third centuries, the heyday of novels). More generally, Pervo’s comparison with
other novels suffers in that a major feature of the most typical form of
ancient novel (a romance between the protagonists) does not fit Acts. Moreover,
the overlap with externally attested historical details is quite atypical of
novels (for some such historical details see, e.g., Charles Talbert, Reading Luke-Acts in its
Mediterranean Milieu [Leiden: Brill, 2003] 198–201; at length, Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the
Setting of Hellenistic History [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989] 108–58). Pervo does not muster many more
convincing responses to these objections than in his earlier work. (Of course,
massive works involve many years of writing; hence different stages of Pervo’s
thought may coexist in the same book.)
Pervo’s current identification
of Acts as “popular history” with a sort of novel invites comparisons with
ancient “historical novels.” One inclined to argue that Acts is a novel (which
I am not) could make a stronger case based on this comparison than from other
sorts of novels, but in antiquity such works comprised only a very small
percentage of novels. (Indeed, most Gentile novels did not even involve
historical characters, and those novels that did so never included the level of
verifiable historical information about a recent character that we find about
Paul in Acts.) Because I expected to find more extensive comparisons with
historical novels in the commentary, I was disappointed, but I must comment
first on his treatment of novels more generally.
Although I am convinced, with
a majority of scholars, that Acts is a historical monograph, I believe that one
can learn even from novels about ancient literary techniques
(techniques that novelists and
historians often shared). For that reason, I found Pervo’s specific comparisons
with novels, though far more extensive than in most commentaries, somewhat
disappointing for one with his perspective. He cites, for example, the
novelists Heliodorus about 50 times, Achilles Tatius 33 times, Chariton 43
times, and Xenophon of Ephesus 40 times—in about 700 pages of commentary. The
literary techniques of historians come in for much lighter treatment: the
massive historical work of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is cited only four times,
and Diodorus Siculus seven times, Arrian three times (all the same reference),
and Polybius only twice.
Pervo does cite more references
than average (perhaps 2,500–3,000 extrabiblical ancient references, almost half
from pagan sources and over a quarter from early Christian sources).
Nevertheless, given his minority perspective on Luke’s genre, I would have
expected more sustained parallels with non-historical sources throughout his
work and more attempts to contrast these parallels with what we find in
historical works. Such comparisons are hardly pervasive in his commentary,
which sometimes substitutes ridicule of Luke’s assumptions about plausibility
for hard comparisons with novels. Given Pervo’s suggestion that Acts is historical romance, it is not surprising
that he cites Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius nearly 40 times; that this work is over a
century after Luke, indulges in fantasies about distant regions, and sometimes
seems to echo by-then widely circulated narratives from the Gospels mitigates
the value of this source to some degree, but it bears examination. What seems
more astonishing is that his index lists only 13 references to
Pseudo-Callisthenes’s Alexander Romance and two references to Xenophon’s Cyropedia, probably the most obvious
other examples of the rare genre he envisions as so central (apart from
Christian works imitating Luke’s Acts).
To illustrate Pervo’s penchant
for generalizing where more hard comparisons are needed, he compares Luke’s
account of the African official to romances that make use of “exotic” regions,
such as Heliodorus’s Aethiopica (pp. 221–22). A survey of both novels and historical works treating
“Ethiopia” (which Pervo does not provide) shows that both may include some
historical elements, and historical works on the subject sometimes include some
inadvertent legends. As I have argued elsewhere, however, novels speaking of
Ethiopia generally include clearly mythical elements, for example, sages who
could make trees salute (Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 6.10). Far from evincing
concern for exotic analogies, Luke does not even seek to describe Ethiopia
(i.e. the kingdom of Meroë), where Philip does not travel. Indeed, in contrast
to even most sources intended to be factual (e.g. Pliny the Elder), no details
that Luke does include (such as the title Candace or the kingdom’s implicit
wealth) contradict what we securely know historically about the kingdom.
Many of Pervo’s judgments,
based on second-century Christian literature, make sense only on his
second-century dating of Acts, though these are his most original
contributions. This material, then, will be far less useful to the strong
majority of readers who do not share Pervo’s dating. (Pervo is well aware in
his work Dating Acts that his second-century date for Acts is a small minority view, though
there again he interacts respectfully with those who hold other views.) This
observation is not meant to denigrate Pervo’s scholarship or his labor; his
fresh reading of Acts in light of such sources (many of them patristic)
displays tremendous erudition and required considerable labor. My point is
simply that this greatest strength of the work will prove of limited value to
most scholars, who remain unpersuaded by his dating of the work.
His commentary probably should
replace Haenchen as the commentary of choice for a detailed, one-volume work
from the more skeptical segment of Acts scholarship. Despite the many points on
which other scholars will disagree (and many of us will strongly disagree) and its
still greater inadequacies for pastors, scholars will need to engage this work.
Craig S. Keener
Palmer Theological
Seminary of Eastern University, Wynnewood, PA
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