The Book of Acts

Overview

The book of the Acts of the Apostles is not included in the UPDV. While Acts appears to be generally based on historical people and events for its outline, many of the details within it appear to be created rather than transmitted from reliable sources.

This conclusion rests on four categories of evidence: differences in writing style between Luke and Acts, contradictions with other New Testament texts, significant amounts of unsubstantiated material, and similarities with Greco-Roman literary conventions.

Writing Style Discrepancies

The internal writing style of the Gospel of Luke differs from Acts in ways that suggest a different author. The most striking indicators are frequency shifts in common Greek words. The particle τε (te) appears 9 times in Luke but 151 times in Acts — a difference far beyond what variation in subject matter would explain. The word ἀνήρ (anēr, "man") appears 27 times in Luke but 100 times in Acts, while ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos, "man/person") appears 95 times in Luke but only 46 times in Acts. A.W. Argyle documents additional examples of these discrepancies, building a cumulative case that the two works do not share a single author.¹

These are not obscure vocabulary differences. These are high-frequency function words and basic nouns — the kind of language patterns that are most resistant to deliberate change and most revealing of authorial habit.

Contradictions with Paul's Own Account

Acts presents events in Paul's life that contradict Paul's own testimony in his letters. The clearest example is the period following Paul's conversion. In Galatians 1:11-2:10, Paul gives a detailed, first-person account of his movements and his relationship with the Jerusalem apostles — an account he introduces with a solemn oath: "before God, I am not lying" (Gal 1:20). He states that after his calling, he did not consult with any human being, did not go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before him, but went away into Arabia and returned to Damascus. Only after three years did he visit Jerusalem, and then he saw only Peter and James.

The corresponding narrative in Acts tells a different story — different in sequence, different in detail, and different in the relationships it portrays between Paul and the Jerusalem leadership. Where Paul insists on his independence from the Jerusalem apostles, Acts portrays a more cooperative and supervised relationship. These are not minor discrepancies in peripheral details. They concern the central question of Paul's apostolic authority and his relationship to the original disciples — a question Paul himself considered important enough to address under oath.

Unsubstantiated Material

Many details in Acts are not present in Paul's writings even where they would be expected. Paul's own descriptions of his conversion and his former persecution of the Church — in Galatians 1:13-24 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-9 — are restrained and brief compared to the dramatic, detailed accounts in Acts. The elaborate conversion narrative on the Damascus road, told three times in Acts with varying details, finds no confirmation in Paul's letters. Paul never mentions a blinding light, a voice from heaven heard by his companions, or a man named Ananias restoring his sight.

This pattern extends beyond the conversion accounts. Throughout Acts, events are narrated with a level of specificity — speeches, dialogues, dramatic confrontations — that lacks any corroboration from the epistles. Where Paul had opportunity and reason to reference these events in his letters, he does not.

Greco-Roman Literary Parallels

Some portions of Acts bear notable similarities to Greco-Roman literary conventions, suggesting that the author drew on the literary culture of his time to construct narratives. Ruben Dupertuis examines the summary passages in Acts 2, 4, and 5 — descriptions of the early Christian community sharing possessions, holding all things in common, and distributing to each as any had need — and demonstrates their resemblance to Greek utopian literary traditions.²

These idealizing community descriptions follow a recognizable pattern from ancient literature: the depiction of a golden-age community characterized by unity, shared property, and the absence of want. This does not necessarily mean the author invented the early church's communal practices from whole cloth, but it does suggest that the literary presentation of these events was shaped by conventions that had nothing to do with historical reporting.

Implications

Any teaching of the Bible that depends on Acts as a source needs to be re-evaluated against the texts that survive independent scrutiny. Doctrines built primarily on Acts — including specific understandings of the Holy Spirit's arrival, the structure of early church governance, and the normative pattern of conversion — should be tested against what Paul, the Gospel authors, and the other epistle writers actually wrote. Where Acts is the sole source for a teaching, that teaching rests on a foundation the UPDV does not consider reliable.

For a detailed examination of how the exclusion of Acts affects specific doctrines, see Speaking in Tongues: What Changes Without Acts?.

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Notes

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