The Speeches in Acts: Historicity (Prof. Padilla)

THE HISTORICITY OF ACTS AND THE SPEECHES

With this overall view of Acts, it is not surprising that Baur questioned the historical reliability of the speeches. Concerning the first five chapters of Acts with its numerous speeches, Baur argued that the era of the church portrayed by these chapters is so distort ed by Luke’s propensity to present the apostles as faultless super humans and to portray the church as blissfully free from conflicts, that the events narrated therein could not possibly be historical (Baur, Paul, 12). If this entire section is thus tendentious, the speeches that are part of the narrative block are also fictitious. In the best-case scenario there is a mixture of free invention and received tradition; however, this latter element does not vouchsafe any more historical reliability because “a writer like the author of the Acts of the Apostles, can not deny himself the right to use even traditional materials in a free and independent manner”. The speech of Stephen is equally viewed as the work of Luke. Is it possible, Baur asks, that Stephen—a man portrayed in Acts as being utterly selfless—could make such a rhetorically and theologi cally polished speech in order to defend none other than himself? Are we also to believe that the angry Jewish audience was able po litely to hold back its rage until Stephen had reached the conclusion of his long speech in order then to attack him? None of this seems historically plausible for Baur. Therefore, Baur answers in the af firmative the question he himself poses: “What is there to prevent the supposition that it is nevertheless the work of the historian himself” (Baur, Paul, 56)? Similar conclusions concerning the historical reliability of the different speeches are found in other parts of Baur’s work.