Action in Speaking. See Homieetics.
Action Sermon, an old Scottish term for the ser- mon immediately before the Lord's Supper.
Actippus. See Achzib.
ActS OF THE APOSTLES (IT(K<?£<C rm> 'A 7700-7-0- \wv), the fifth book of the New Testament, and the last of those properly historical. It ol itained this title at a very early period, though sometimes the epithet holy was prefixed to apostles, and sometimes also it was reckoned among the gospels, and called the Gospel <f the Holy Ghost, or the Gospel of the Resurrection. (See, generally, Dr. Tregelles, in Home's Introd. last ed. iv, 470 sq.)
I. Authorship.— The Acts were evidently written by the same author as the third Gospel (comp. Puke i, 1 -4, with Acts i, 1), and tradition is firm and constant in ascribing them to Luke (Iremcus, Adv. Hcer. lib. i, c. 31; iii, 14; Clemens Alexandr. Strom, v, p. 588; Tertullian, Adv. Marcim, v, 2; De Jejun. c. 10; Ori- gin, apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi, 23, etc. Eusebius himself ranks this book among the bjloKoyovfllva, I!. /•;. iii, 25). The fact that I.uke accompanied Paul to Rome (xxviii), and was with him there (Col. iv, 14 ; Phil. 24), favors the supposition that lie was the writer of the narrative of the apostle's journey to that city.
ACTS
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ACTS
See Paul. The identity of the writer of both books is strongl)- shown by their great similarity in style and idiom, and the usage of particular words and com- pound forms. (See Tholuck, in the Stud. u. Krit. 1839, iii ; Klostermann, Vrndicke Lucance, Gott. 18G6.) The only parties in primitive times by whom this book was rejected were certain heretics, such as the Mar- cionites, the Severians, and the Manich.-eans, whose objections were entirely of a dogmatical, not of a historical nature (so those of Baur and his school). At the same time we find Chrysostom complaining that by many in his day it was not so much as known (Horn, i, in Act. s. init.). Perhaps, however, there is some rhetorical exaggeration in this statement; or it may be, as Kuinol (Prole//, in Acta App. Comment, iv, 5) suggests, that Chrysostom's complaint refers rather to a prevalent omission of the Acts from the number of books publicly read in the churches (see Salmerson, De libri Actorum auctoritate, in his Opera, vol. xii).
II. Source of Materials. — The writer is for the first time introduced into the narrative in ch. xvi, 11, where he speaks of accompanying Paul to Philippi. He then disappears from the narrative until Paul's re- turn to Philippi, more than two years afterward, when it is stated that they left that place in company (xx, 6), from which it may be justly inferred that Luke spent the interval in that town. From this time to the close of the period embraced by his narrative he appears as the companion of the apostle. For the ma- terials, therefore, of all he has recorded from ch. xvi, 11, to xxviii, 31, he may be regarded as having drawn upon his own recollection or on that of the apostle. To the latter source also may be confidently traced all he has recorded concerning the earlier events of the apostle's career ; and as respects the circumstances re- corded in 4he first twelve chapters of the Acts, and which relate chiefly to the Church at Jerusalem and the labors of the apostle Peter, we may readily sup- pose that they were so much matter of general noto- riety among the Christians with whom Luke associ- ated, that he needed no assistance from any other merely human source in recording them. Some of the German critics (see Zeller, Die Apostelgesch. nach ihrem Inhalt u. Ursprung kri/isch untersucht, Stuttg. 1854) have labored hard to show that he must have had re- course to written documents, in order to compose those parts of his history which record what did not pass un- der his own observation, and they have gone the length of supposing the existence of a work in the language of Palestine, under the title of "Acts of Cephas" or his " Preaching" (XS'1?^ "^""a or XP.^rX), of which the apocryphal book of the same title (Upa^tiQ JlErpov or Kfipvyjia EUrpou), mentioned by Clement of Alex- andria (Strom, vii, p. 736) and Origen (Comment, in Joh. p. 298), was an interpolated edition (Heinrichs, Proleg. in Acta App. p. 21; Kuinol, Proleg. p. 5). All this, however, is mere ungrounded supposition ; and such Hebrew editions, if they at all existed, must have been versions from the Greek (Reland, Pulcest. p. 1038). Sec Peter.
III. Design. — A prevalent opinion is, that Luke, having in his Gospel given a history of the life of Christ, intended to follow that up by giving in the Acts a narrative of the establishment and early prog- ress of his religion in the world. That this, however, could not have been his design, is obvious from the very partial and limited view which his narrative gives of tin- state of things in the Church generally during the period through which it extends. As little can we re- gard this book as designed to record the official history of the Apostles Peter and Paul, for we find many par- ticulars concerning both these apostles mentioned in- cidentally elsewhere, of which Luke takes no notice (comp. 2 Cor. xi; Gal. i, 17; ii, 11 ; 1 Pet. v, 13. See also Michaelis, Introduction, iii, 328; Hanlein's l-'.in- leitung, iii, 150). Heinrichs, Kuinol, and others arc