Acts 1:1-14

Acts 1:1. Link connecting this book with St Luke's Gospel. Detailed account of the Ascension

The Title. According to the best MSS. this should be simply "Acts of Apostles." The Cod. Sin.gives only "Acts." The former of these titles, while having most authority, also most fitly describes the character of the composition. The book is not TheActs of theApostles, but merely someActs of certainApostles which are related by the author, intermixed with the acts of others among the Christian community, where such additions were needful to make the story clear. The writer tells us in the introduction how Christ, when ascending in glory, declared what should be the course which His doctrine should take in its extension, "Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judæa and Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). To describe the fulfilment of this departing prophecy is that on which the whole book is engaged. It is natural, therefore, to find that the two chief actors are the energetic Peter, and, after his conversion, the enthusiastic Apostle of the Gentiles. But even they are only used as representative characters. The writer does not aim at giving us full details of the work of either of these Apostles. We see most of Peter and John while the preaching is confined to Jerusalem, but the narrative leaves them to recount some acts of Philip, because he was the pioneer of the Gospel in Samaria. Peter is again brought before us engaged in preaching in Judæa and Samaria and confirming the work which Philip and his companions had begun; and because the conversion of Cornelius was the beginning of the proclamation of Christ's message beyond the Jewish race, we have a full account of St Peter's mission to this first Gentile convert and of the debate which arose among the Jews in consequence. But when Peter has been present at the council of Jerusalem, at which was finally settled the relation between the Jews and Gentiles who became Christians, we lose sight of him, and the further spread of the Gospel is summarized in a description of some of the labours of St Paul; and when he has reached the capital of the west, to shew us that the writer contemplated no biography of St Paul, the history comes to what some have thought an abrupt close. But the writer's task was done when he had told how the great Apostle brought Christ's message to the capital of the Gentile world. See Introduction.