Generic Parallels:

• Same broad literary type and genre

This author’s thesis is that Christian teaching has a solid basis. He uses the word asphaleia, which is related to our word “asphalt.” It is one of several words like “truth” and “precision” that ancient historians typically used to make their cases. Luke also mentions that he has followed events “precisely.” But asphaleia also serves here as the writer’s major theme: his two books will be geared to demonstrating the “sure foundation” on which Christianity rests, just as Josephus set out to give the unvarnished, precise truth about the course of the Jewish revolt.

• Both Josephus/Luke wrote sequals to their original compositions w/ prefaces.
• Josephus explains why his work is necessary and looks at his previous work, just like Luke.
• Like Josephus, Luke moves imperceptibly from a summary of his earlier work to his present book. Whereas the former history had dealt with Jesus’ actions and teachings, this one will recount the actions and teachings of his apostles. These men had already been introduced in the first volume (Luke 6:13- 16). Now they are presented as Jesus’ chosen representatives who carry on his mission. In particular, they are credible witnesses to his resurrection from the dead (cf. 1:22; 2:32; 3:15). Continuing his demonstration of the sure foundation of Christian teaching, Luke insists in this preface that Jesus’ resurrection, the basis of the apostles’ preaching, was witnessed during a forty-day period—it wasn’t an illusion—and was confirmed with many “sure proofs” {tekmeria, a technical term in rhetoric for proof).

Luke’s reference to Theophilus in both of his prefaces provides another significant parallel to Josephus, who dedicates his later works—Antiquities, Life, and Against Apion—to one Epaphroditus. Josephus introduces this figure in the preface to Antiquities, where he records his admiration and gratitude, for it was Epaphroditus who encouraged him to complete the laborious work. Josephus describes him as a statesman, one familiar with “large affairs and varying turns of fortune” (1.8). He goes on to say that Epaphroditus is “an enthusiastic supporter of persons with ability to produce some useful or beautiful work” (1.9). Most important, he calls him by the same form of address that Luke uses for Theophilus, “noblest” or “most excellent” (Life 430; Ag. Ap. 1.1), and just as Luke writes to demonstrate the truth of Christian teaching, Josephus concludes his Against Apion: To you, Epaphroditus, who excel in devotion to the truth, and on your account to those who likewise desire to know about our race, I beg to dedicate this and the preceding volume (2.296, author’s translation).

A third standard feature of Hellenistic history shared by Josephus and Luke-Acts is the formulation of speeches for the leading characters.

13 speeches:

1. It is equally clear that the speeches of Acts are theologically motivated/invented to advance his narrative aims.
   • Peter/Paul choose the same scriptures and use them in the same way.
   • The parallels are perfectly aligned, which makes us think that the author of Acts purposefully invented a better relationship with Peter and Paul in order to mend the tension.

• The result is that, in Acts, Paul sounds much like Stephen and Peter. As with Thucydides or Josephus, one does not find here the striking differences of style or personal spoken mannerisms that one would expect in an anthology of speeches from different individuals.
• The author introduced some Pauline language into one of Paul’s speeches (13:38-39), on the whole the speeches advance the author’s own portrayal of Christian origins and belief. They are not meant to be mere reproductions of what was actually said. The apparatus of the preface, the references to patrons, and the carefully crafted speeches are only a few of the most obvious features of Hellenistic history writing that are shared by Josephus and Luke-Acts. Historians of the period were also obligated to make their narratives exciting and “delightful.”
• The story of Paul’s shipwreck (Acts 27) is similar to an episode Josephus tells about himself {Life 14-16).
• Paul’s encounter with the snake (Acts 27), in which he survives what should have been a fatal bite, was a common motif in the literature of the period.
• The immediate divine punishment of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) and of Agrippa I (Acts 12) heightens the reader’s sense of awe; Josephus tells of many similar episodes. “Poetic justice,” immediate and fitting retribution for sin, was a standard feature of ancient Greek narrative.
• Further, like all Hellenistic historians, Josephus and Luke detail the human emotions of their characters—jealousy, envy, “fear and trembling,” joy, and remorse. We have already noted that Luke’s account of Jesus’ genealogy and precocious youth (at age twelve) were common features of Greco-Roman biography also paralleled in Josephus. These and many other commonplaces situate Josephus and Luke-Acts squarely within the world of Hellenistic historiography.

• Like Josephus, Luke must also explained why his religion is not opposed to Roman order.

Commonly Reported Events

The Census Under Quirinius

Because Joseph was a descendant of David, Luke continues, he had to leave Nazareth with the pregnant Mary and travel to Bethlehem, the city of David’s origin. That is how Joseph and Mary came to be in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. Two weeks later, they would return to Nazareth along with the newborn Jesus (2:22, 39; cf. Lev 12:1-8). So the census is critical to Luke’s story because it provides the context for Jesus’ birth. However, there’s 3 problems with that.

• Some scholars have tried to solve problem (a) by proposing that there was an earlier census, also by Quirinius, while Herod was still alive—different from the one mentioned by Josephus in AD 6. But Josephus and Luke both make it clear that this census under Quirinius was the “first” census.
• That point is indispensable to Josephus’ whole portrayal of Judas’ campaign, for if there had been a census ten years earlier, the rebels’ complaints would have been poorly timed. In any case, Luke himself later refers to “Judas the Galilean,” who “arose in the days of the census” (Acts 5:37). It is clear that he thinks of one famous census under Quirinius, the one in which Judas initiated a rebel movement. And however one resolves problem (a), the equally serious (b) and (c) remain.
• Here, then, is the issue. In the few lines that he devotes to the census, Luke manages to associate it with both Quirinius, governor of Syria, and Judas the Galilean. These points agree with Josephus’ presentation in a conspicuous way. Because of his literary aims, Josephus is the one who makes the point that the census symbolized Roman occupation and so was opposed by the arch-rebel Judas the Galilean.
• We suspect that other writers would not have given the census such prominence or made such connections with the rebel psychology. These observations suggest that Luke was familiar with Josephus’ work. Otherwise, it would be a remarkable coincidence that he also chooses to feature the census and to mention its connection with Judas the Galilean. Yet if Luke had known Josephus, it is difficult to understand why he placed Quirinius’ census at the end of Herod’s reign, flatly contradicting Josephus. Perhaps these circumstances are best explained if Luke knew some highlights of Josephus’ story but did not recall or was not concerned with the details.

Judas the Galilean, Theudas, and the Egyptian Prophet

In support of this conclusion, we may note that Luke knows about Josephus’ three most important rebel figures from the pre-war period: Judas the Galilean, Theudas, and the Egyptian prophet.

When we turn to Luke-Acts, we are struck by two facts: (a) the author happens to mention the same three figures who are featured by Josephus, and (b) he associates them in ways reminiscent of Josephus’ narratives. Judas and Theudas appear together in the speech of Gamaliel, in which he advises the Jewish council to leave the Christians alone. Taken individually, Luke’s remarks about these two figures match Josephus’ accounts fairly well. Admittedly, Theudas’ following of four hundred hardly captures Josephus’ claim that he persuaded the majority of the masses; and Josephus does not mention Judas’ death as Luke does. But numbers are notoriously fluid in ancient texts (compare Josephus’ own differences with himself on the size of the Egyptian’s following!), and Luke’s statement that Judas was “destroyed” is quite vague.

1. • Paradoxically, it is the differences between this remark and Josephus’ account that suggest Luke’s awareness of Josephus. The similarity is clear enough: Paul is arrested while Felix is governor, and that is also the period to which Josephus assigns the Egyptian. But Josephus stresses that the Egyptian was not a member of the sicarii; they were guerrillas, whereas he was a religious-prophetic figure (War2.258). Acts has him leading the sicarii. Josephus also claims that the Egyptian led his men to the Mount of Olives to prepare for the seizure of Jerusalem, whereas Acts has him leading men out into the desert. And, given the sicarii mode of operation, mingling with crowds to dispose of enemies, it is not clear why they would head for the desert. Further, whereas Josephus gives the Egyptian about thirty thousand men in War, rather fewer in Antiquities, Acts has only four thousand.
   • Luke’s placing of the sicarii in the desert indicates that he knows their name but is not clear about what they do. This confusion is best explained if he is relying on a source that led him to link the sicarii with the Egyptian, and the Egyptian with the desert. Luke’s use of this group is symptomatic of his general relation to non-Christian affairs. Like Judas and the census, Theudas, and the Egyptian, the sicarii lend an air of realism to Luke’s narrative—an important quality in Hellenistic history-writing. He does not agree with Josephus in details, but the particular ways in which he disagrees suggest that he knew a narrative much like that of Josephus. His references to political events in Judea are understandable if he had read portions of Josephus or had heard the Jewish historian recite, 1 5 then later recalled some of this material for his own story. If Luke did not know Josephus, we are faced with an astonishing number of coincidences: he links Judas and the census as a watershed event, connects Judas and Theudas, connects the Egyptian with the sicarii, connects the Egyptian with the desert, and selects these three figures out of all the anonymous guerrillas and impostors of the period.

**In addition to the parallels considered in this and earlier chapters, several less significant ones may be mentioned: **

• (i) Luke’s mention of “Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene” (Luke 3:1; cf. Wizr2.215,247; Ant. 19.275);
• (ii) Luke’s parable of the man who traveled to another country to receive his kingship, but was hated by his own people, whom he punished with death, which seems like a thinly veiled reference to the family of Herod as described by Josephus (Luke 19:12-27; War 1.282-285);
• (iii) Luke’s description of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, including a reference to the slaughter of children (Luke 19:43- 44; cf. War 6 in general); and
• (iv) Luke’s reference to a famine during the reign of Claudius, in which Barnabas and Saul brought relief to Jerusalem from Antioch (Acts 11:28-29; cf. Ant. 3.320; 20.51-53, 101). Although they do not seem at first to describe the same incident,
• (v) Luke’s reference to Pilate’s attack on some Galileans (Luke 13:1) sounds somewhat like Josephus’ account of Pilate’s dealings with some Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim (Ant. 18.85-87).

Language/vocabulary similarity