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Another Layer of Wesleyan Dual Inspiration: Dual Historical Criticality
By, Erin Grimm © All Rights Reserved
August 13, 2024
Historical criticism is an approach to biblical inquiry that analyzes the historical contexts of a passage or series of passages during the interpretative task, rather than sandwiching the world of the biblical text into our time as if what life was like then is what life is like now. As a translation and interpreting instructor, I told my students: if in the United States, we shake hands across the threshold of a door while in Russia this is a bad omen, just imagine what we’re missing as we compare cultures and languages across the ages!
Overview
Jesus’ words at the beginning of Acts provide an important window into understanding and interpreting the entire Acts narrative as a literary and political text. Acts 1:1-14 talks about the Holy Land, its surrounding lands, and the lands that aren’t part of “the Holy Land”—what the text describes as the ends of the earth. I will treat this topic through engagement with Christian ethics and the practice of mission and politics as Christians even today view Scripture, through the introduction of Acts, as unfolding across time.
Acts 1:1-14
1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 After his suffering[a] he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 While staying[b] with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with[c] the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The Ascension of Jesus
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Matthias Chosen to Replace Judas
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying: Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of[d] James. 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
Some Context for Acts 1:1-14
The context I offer in this section relates to what I will refer to as dual historical criticality (to be discussed below). The Book of Acts is the second volume of the work Luke-Acts, which is a “story of Christian origins.”[1] The Book of Acts opens with an account of the ascension of Christ, the replacement of Judas, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The plot unfolds from the life of Christ to the disciples’ actions. Peter and Paul dominate the narrative of Acts, with Stephen, Philip, Cornelius, James, and others, coming into focus at important parts.
In the recounting of Jewish history by Stephen (Acts 6-7) the events of Acts are linked with the Old Testament narrative. This is also seen, in taking a narrative approach that links Luke-Acts, in Jesus’s words in Luke 24:44-47 (NRSVue):
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. [2]
Acts 2 describes the story of the Pentecost, an incident that began to break down divisions between ethnicity and language. Acts 2:11 clarifies that those involved were Jews and converts to Judaism, making it still more inclusive in its embrace of identities, and what we might now call “race”: Jewishness is not associated with race. Its description of Jewishness is neither essentialist nor static.
Jesus, echoing Luke 24:44-47 (above), is quoted at the opening of Acts: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). After the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the soon-to-be termed “Christians” (Acts 11:26) witness in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria (2:42-12:24) through the figures of Stephen, Philip, and Saul/Paul. The gentile mission is the commencement of the “to the ends of the earth” benediction from Jesus in 1:8. This begins either with Philip the Evangelist (8:4-40) or with the story of the conversion of Cornelius and his household (10:1-11:18)[3]—both events are linked.[4] Peter is the protagonist of each narrative. Paul famously takes up the largest aspect of Jesus’s prophetic call to witness to the ends of the earth (Acts 12:25-28:31). Paul then journeys to Jerusalem and finally to Rome, the center of the Empire. Significantly, Paul’s relationship with his Roman citizenship is ambivalent and his ministry is a prison ministry, carried out while under arrest.
Methodology
I propose my term: “dual historico-criticality.” I want to engage traditional, modernist readings that may interpret Acts 1:6-7 (NRSVue) in Zionist fashion. I want to complexify their uncritical attempts to validate the “restoration of the kingdom” as if the kingdom were the nation-state Israel:
“So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.’”
If we apply historical criticism not just to reading the text and its background, but through the lens of historico-criticality of today—criticality implying social critique—we can interpret ethically, acknowledging that Jerusalem is a colonized city and Palestine a colonized land. As Wesleyans believe in the dual inspiration of Scripture (Scripture’s creation and the reading of Scripture today are both inspired), critical exegesis of texts needs to be dually historico-critical. In a way, all sermons already do this work whenever they exhort their hearers to commit to a certain action today. By inveighing upon the Church’s interpreters to follow the procedures sketched below, we can be responsible and responsive to today’s social evils, such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Orientalism.
The history of the text’s interpretation has resulted in a Zionist understanding of Acts 1:6-7 whereby the kingdom needs to be restored to Israel not as a biblical trope but as a current nation-state. Really, the kingdom was a figure of speech referring to the proclaiming of the gospel and not a stronghold for Zionist eschatological fantasy. Jerusalem in these opening verses of Acts is not colonized. There was not a genocide occurring at the time of writing. My approach would call on us to cease transporting the word Jerusalem in Acts 1:6 and 1:11 without seeing how the reception history of Acts 1:1-14 has contributed to genocide and ethnic cleansing. We should apply that to the text and not one-sided criticality that would impose these Scripture verses and others like them geographically upon the Holy Land today.
Luke-Acts is a narrative, and narrative is the bearer of moral content—always, hence Jesus told parables rather than administer commandments.
Unity and Diversity
While it doesn’t seem that Acts was written to be a chronological, logically unfolding narrative of the type we might see today,[5] breaking bread, prayer, fasting, and teaching are core aspects of the Christian life and are foundational practices of the new ekklēsia from the beginning. Prayer is a foundational aspect of human spirituality, and a primary marker of the first Christians was prayer together. Men and women were praying together. Acts 1:14 reads “These all were devoting (προσκαρτεροῦντες) themselves with a single purpose to prayer, with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” προσκαρτεροῦντες means “steadfastly” and is linked to ὁμοθυμαδὸν, “of one mind.” In Acts 2:42, the apostles devote themselves (προσκαρτεροῦντες) to teaching the apostles, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. 2:46 shows the community continuing to gather (προσκαρτεροῦντες). In Acts 4:32, the community is of one heart and mind (καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ μία).[6]
Acts 2 will make clear that this unity of mind, body, and spirit, does not wallpaper over distinctiveness in culture, ethnicity, or even language. Significantly, Acts 6 features the first rupture of the community and the word but, “but we will devote ourselves (προσκαρτεροῦντες) to prayer,” (emphasis added) is a resolution adopted after racial division becomes manifest between the Hellenists and the Hebrews. This “but” here shows their resolution to carry on as before, but the fate of Stephen shows that they had not acknowledged racial, cultural, and socioeconomic distinctiveness to the degree that was called for: Stephen is martyred.
What are the implications of them being of one mind, and yet then the Pentecost comes and speaks to each in their native language? That could be the foundation of intercultural Christian fellowship even today: united in prayer, yet each in their own language. Each language has its own worldview, grammar, and cognitive maps. In my interpretation, Acts 6 represents a failure when the believers decide to devote themselves to the word of God without seeing part of that as requiring service for the more disadvantaged, neglected, or abused members of the community (the Hellenists). Throughout Acts, we are supposed to remember these first 14 verses as a pedal point through which we can assess what happens.
Reading Against the Grain in Acts 1:1-14: A De-Eschatological Framework
When Christians strive, it easily becomes Zionist, and that is a geographic, spiritual, psychological—and more—cesspool. And it’s all there in the first 14 verses of Acts. Acts 1:1-14 lays out the framework within which the Christian story will unfold—this is undeniably the case. Yet this basic procedure of importing Scripture directly into our lives in such Zionist instances needs to be qualified and the depth of our investment in enacting its geographical dimensions interrogated and, in my opinion, ultimately abandoned.[7]
Barrett writes, “It is between these points that the church lives, and its life is determined by them.”[8] Jack T. Sanders concluded in 1984 that attempts to separate Jesus from an immanent eschatology pulled loose “strands of the eschatology,” ruining Jesus and Christian eschatology with one blow.[9] People are not considering the implications of uncritically importing of Scripture into their daily lives and political imaginations. It should not be that, merely because things become more complicated if we separate Jesus’ teachings from this end-times theology we should cease caring about the implications of the Zionism that results. Mapping of the Old Testament prophesies onto life in Jerusalem at the time is much more convenient—and fraught. Thus Acts 2 is described as the end times and cites Joel, because that moment, the Pentecost, was seen to fulfill those scriptures. In a provocative chapter in Early Christian Interpretations of the Scriptures of Israel, J. Ross Wagner draws parallels between the architecture of Psalm 118 in Luke-Acts. Wagner writes:
Psalm 118 runs like a thread through Luke-Acts, helping to structure and advance the narrative (for example, by foreshadowing events, creating dramatic tension, heightening irony) and in the process, serving to further Luke’s theological agenda. The net effect is that Luke’s narrative itself, rather than isolated quotations within it, points to the fulfillment of Israel’s Scriptures in the ministry of Jesus and the mission of the church.[10]
The phrase “to the ends of the earth” was a generic phrase that implied universality just as, I would suggest, the restoration of the kingdom means the fullness of time, theologically, and not the physical reconstruction of the Kingdom. One is a universal omnipresence, and the other is a universal being in all times at once.
Intertextuality between books of the Bible reminds us that Scripture deepens our understanding of and interpretation of Scripture. It also shows, more broadly, how dangerous this process can be given that, following this thread, people have seen the mission of the church as a politically Zionist one, and have also used Scripture for land theft. By bringing a literary approach that sees Luke-Acts as a two-volume work rather than as wedded to the canon—though undoubtedly it is that—we can bring criticality to bear, undercutting simplistic mapping of past cognitive and geographical grammars onto Israel-Palestine today. This is not as unorthodox as might seem since, as Thompson reminds us,[11] the book circulated before the creation of the New Testament canon alongside the epistles, often serving as their introduction.
At the opening of Acts, the eleven are instructed not to leave Jerusalem. It was considered holy, as the site of the crucifixion, resurrection, and appearances of Christ. When the restoration of the Kingdom is touched upon, this is a futuristic present, meaning, is this about to happen? While the question implies a Zealot interpretation of the meaning of the life and resurrection of Jesus, the answer given—that it is not for them to know when the kingdom will be restored—is interpreted by Barrett as an indication of what he sees as Luke’s argument: that it is in the life of Christians that God’s sovereignty is expressed. The lesson of the opening of Luke-Acts is that the death and resurrection of Christ are the beginning and not the end.[12]
The Bible and Empire[13]
In his book The Bible and Empire, Sugirtharajah draws upon an analysis of Benjamin Franklin and John Colenso as examples of using the Bible to promote empire or thwart it, respectively. Benjamin Franklin drew upon his deist proclivities to edit out all the supernatural or theological aspects, making Jesus a historical, ethical teacher. Colenso believed that the Bible was written by the same Spirit that is with us now, and this enabled him to see the shape of redemption and to teach it to the Zulu people he was charged with as a missionary and Anglican bishop. For Franklin, the Bible had timeless maxims, while for Colenso, the Bible was a context-specific book describing Jesus, who lived “in the ages long ago, and in circumstances very different from ours.” According to Sugirtharajah, hermeneutics in the case of Colenso was to let the spirit of the Bible inform its teaching rather than seeing it as a revelation of timeless moral codes. The spirit in which and with which the Bible was written would have us cease transporting Jerusalem of the opening chapters of Acts into the American empire’s quest of Zion today. It’s no longer in the spirit of the Bible.
© Erin Michael Grimm, All Rights Reserved
Works Cited
Anderson, Kevin L. “Acts.” In Wesley One Volume Commentary, edited by Kenneth J. Collins and Robert W. Wall, 679–708. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2020.
Barrett, C. K. Acts of the Apostles: A Shorter Commentary. Manhattan, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2002.
Bock, Darrell. Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament). Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2007.
Cartwright, Michael G. “A Debate That Disappoints: The Use of Scripture in Formalist Ethics.” In Practices, Politics, and Performance: Toward a Communal Hermeneutic for Christian Ethics, 39–82. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006.
Holladay, Carl R. Acts: A Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016.
Marshall, Alfred. The RSV Interlinear Greek-English New Testament. Fourteenth Printing. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1981.
Marshall, I. Howard. Acts: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008.
Sugirtharajah, R.S. The Bible and Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Thompson, Richard P. Acts: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition. Kansas City, Mo: Nazarene Publishing House, 2015.
Wagner, J. Ross. “Psalm 118 in Luke-Acts: Tracing a Narrative.” In Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel: Investigations and Proposals. Manhattan, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 1997.
[1] Anderson, “Acts,” 679. I. Howard Marshall notes that it was common for books to be comprised of multiple parts, each with a short introduction in the ancient world. Marshall, Acts: An Introduction and Commentary, 59.
[2] Bock, Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament), 90. Witherington also makes this point.
[3] And the healing and resurrection that preceded it (9:32-43).
[4] People are divided on whether Philip should be considered a Jew or a Gentile, and a discussion of this is beyond the focus of this paper.
[5] Barrett, Acts of the Apostles: A Shorter Commentary, lxxxvi.
[6] Marshall, The RSV Interlinear Greek-English New Testament.
[7] Ibid, 3.
[8] Ibid, 3.
[9] Cited in Cartwright, Cartwright, “A Debate That Disappoints: The Use of Scripture in Formalist Ethics,” 52-53.
[10]Wagner, “Psalm 118 in Luke-Acts: Tracing a Narrative,” 156.
[11] Thompson, Acts: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, 39.
[12] Holladay, Acts: A Commentary, 121.
[13] Sugirtharajah, The Bible and Empire, drawn from Chapters 1 and 3.
© Erin Michael Grimm, All Rights Reserved
