Stanley E. Porter and Ron C. Fay, eds.
Reviewed by Peter J. Scaer on 08/26/2022
The confessional church’s relationship with the academy is increasingly tenuous. Attend the convention of the Society of Biblical Literature, and you will have to look long and hard for sessions that bear the mark of true Christianity. Identity politics is the order of the day, and you are bound to find the text under various sociological lenses, with the result that the Scriptures end up looking like the glasses by which they are read. This has long been the case, but no one can doubt the scholarship of previous generations, in which entrance into the academy demanded mastery of many languages and a wide-ranging knowledge of the cultural and historical context. Many Christian colleges either accept the orthodoxy of the academy as a given, or they avoid such scholars all together.
But there is still much to learn. Luke-Acts in Modern Interpretation is a case in point. In a helpful volume of twelve essays, readers are introduced to the work of such scholars as Martin Dibelius, F. F. Bruce, and Hans Conzelmann. It might surprise today’s readers to learn that Adolf Harnack was convinced that the book of Acts was written around the year 62 AD. Harnack’s argument for Luke himself being a Christian from Antioch is compelling. Zachary K. Dawson’s essay “Adolf Harnack and Lukan Scholarship at the Height of Classical Liberalism” offers an open window into the thinking of a man who influenced much of the academy that came after him. Likewise, James D. Dvorak demonstrates how Martin Dibelius highlighted aspects of Luke’s Gospel that comport with the ancient genre of biography. Osvaldo Padilla shows how Henry Joel Cadbury helped us to see Luke-Acts as a work in two parts, the Gospel anticipating Christ’s work in the church of the Pentecost. Stanley E. Porter gives the reader an appreciation for F. F. Bruce’s thoroughgoing defense of Luke as a reliable historian.
A book such as this will be of interest to those who wish to be introduced to the titans of scholarship past, an age in which the texts, even when put under a skeptical microscope, mattered. For those who would like to gather a little bit of the past, this volume is recommended.