Acts and Christian Beginnings

Acts was long thought to be a first-century document, and its author Luke to be a disciple of Paul and thus an eyewitness or acquaintance of eyewitnesses to nascent Christianity. Acts was considered history, pure and simple. 


In 2001 the Acts Seminar, a decade-long collaborative project by scholars affiliated with the Westar Institute, began working through the canonical Acts of the Apostles from beginning to end and evaluating it for historical accuracy. The Seminar concluded that Acts is not history. Furthermore, it found that Acts dates from the second century. This final report of the Acts Seminar explains how and why it reached those conclusions, which not only challenge Acts’ view of history but raise a host of new questions, also addressed in this report.