The Genre of Acts and Collected Biography

Abstract

It is widely accepted by New Testament scholars that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles probably originated as two parts of one work by a single author. In spite of this, the books have been assigned to very different genres: Luke is traditionally viewed as a biography of Jesus, and Acts as a history of the early church. Comparing in detail the structure and content of Acts with the formal features of history, novel, epic and biography, Sean Adams challenges this division. Applying both ancient and modern genre theory, he argues that the best genre parallel for the Acts of the Apostles is in fact collected biography. Offering a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of genre theory, along with an insightful argument regarding the composition and purpose of Acts, this book will be of interest to those studying the New Testament, Acts, genre theory and ancient literature.

Journeys without End: Narrative Endings and Implied Readers in Acts of the Apostles and Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana

“…On Acts' genre, see (Sterling 1992;Adams 2012Adams , 2013aSmith and Kostopoulos 2017). On the genre of Life, see (Bowie 1978;Boter 2015;Abraham 2017).…”