Acts of the Apostles

by Linda M. Maloney, Ivoni Richter Reimer, Willie James Jennings (Afterword), Barbara E. Reid OP (Editor)

Overview

2023 Catholic Media Association Third Place Award, Scripture – Academic Studies

The Acts of the Apostles, the earliest work of its kind to have survived from Christian antiquity, is not “history” in the modern sense, nor is it about what we call “the church.” Written at least half a century after the time it describes, it is a portrait of the Movement of Jesus’ followers as it developed between 30 and 70 CE. More important, it is a depiction of the Movement of what Jesus wanted: the inbreaking of the reign of God. In this commentary, Linda Maloney, Ivoni Richter Reimer, and a host of other contributing voices look at what the text does and does not say about the roles of the original members of the Movement in bringing it toward fruition, with a special focus on those marginalized by society, many of them women. The author of Acts wrote for followers of Jesus in the second century and beyond, contending against those who wanted to break from the community of Israel and offering hope against hope, like Israel’s prophets before him. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814681947
Publisher:	Liturgical Press
Publication date:	11/27/2022
Series:	Wisdom Commentary Series , #45
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	472
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Linda M. Maloney received her PhD in American studies from St. Louis University (1968) and her ThD in New Testament from the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen (1990), with Prof. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink as her Doktorvater. She is the first woman in the history of the Roman Catholic faculty at Tübingen to earn the ThD in Scripture. Having taught American history at several universities in the 1970s (and cofounded the Women’s Studies Program at the University of South Carolina), she joined the faculty of the Franciscan School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union from 1989 to 1995. Thereafter, until 2007, she was academic editor at Liturgical Press. She was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 2003. Since 2005 she has served churches in the Diocese of Vermont and in the Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of Montreal. She has been active since 1986 as a translator of books on Scripture, theology, and liturgy, mainly from German to English, including four volumes in the Hermeneia series from Fortress Press.
 
Ivoni Richter Reimer is a native of Brazil. She earned her ThD at the University of Kassel in Germany in 1990, working with Luise Schottroff. Her dissertation, translated into English (1995) as Women in the Acts of the Apostles: A Feminist Liberation Perspective, has been published in four languages. Since 1991 she has been a professor of theology and religious studies in Rio de Janeiro at the Universidade Metodista and Faculdade Teológica Batista do Sul do Brasil and then in Goiânia/Goiás at the Pontificia Universidade de Goiás, influencing three generations of students of feminist liberation theology and exegesis. She is also a Lutheran pastor, active in community building and developing leadership.
 
Willie James Jennings is associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University Divinity School. His specializations also include postcolonial and race theory. He received his BA from Calvin College, his MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, and his PhD in systematic theology from Duke University. He is the author of prize-winning works, including The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press); After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Eerdmans), the 2020 Publishers Weekly book of the year; and Acts in the Belief series (Westminster John Knox). In 2015 he received the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his groundbreaking work on race and Christianity.
 
Barbara E. Reid, general editor of the Wisdom Commentary series, is a Dominican Sister of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the president of Catholic Theological Union and the first woman to hold the position. She has been a member of the CTU faculty since 1988 and also served as vice president and academic dean from 2009 to 2018. She holds a PhD in biblical studies from The Catholic University of America and was also president of the Catholic Biblical Association in 2014–2015.
Mary Ann Beavis is professor emerita of religion and culture at St. Thomas More College (Saskatoon, Canada). She received MA degrees from the University of Manitoba and the University of Notre Dame; she holds a PhD from Cambridge University (UK). Her areas of interest and expertise include Christian origins, feminist biblical interpretation, Christianity and Goddess spirituality, and religion and popular culture. She is the author of several single-author and edited books as well as many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Abbreviations   xi
List of Contributors   xv
Foreword: “Come Eat of My Bread . . . and Walk in the Ways of
        Wisdom”   xix
     Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Editor’s Introduction to Wisdom Commentary:
        “She Is a Breath of the Power of God” (Wis 7:25)   xxiii
     Barbara E. Reid, OP
Authors’ Acknowledgments   xliii
Author’s Introduction: Translating Worlds   xlv
Acts 1:1-4a   Preface   1
Acts 1:4b-14   Ascension   7
Acts 1:15-26   Making Up the Twelve (Male) Apostles   19
Acts 2:1-13   Pentecost: The Spirit Falls on the Whole Company
                     of Women and Men   25
Acts 2:14-40   Peter’s Pentecost Speech   31
Acts 2:41-47   The Jerusalem Community: First Summary   39
Acts 3:1–4:4   Peter and John in the Temple with a Man
                       Who Cannot Walk   43 
Acts 4:5-22   The Apostles on Trial   51
Acts 4:23-37   The Movement Gathered in Harmony   57
Acts 5:1-11   A Counter-Example: Ananias and Sapphira   61
Acts 5:12-42   Peter and the Apostles Confront the Authorities
                        for the Last Time   67
Acts 6:1-7   The Widows’ Crisis and the Choosing of the Seven   73
Acts 6:8-15   Stephen’s Ministry   83
Acts 7:1–8:1a   Stephen’s Defense and Martyrdom   91
Acts 8:1b-25    The Mission Begins   103
Acts 8:26-40   The Ethiopian   111
Acts 9:1-31   The Calling of Saul   123
Acts 9:32-43   Peter on Mission: Tabitha Is Raised   133
Acts 10:1–11:18   God Shows No Partiality  143
Acts 11:19-30   Peace and Growth   155
Acts 12:1-25   Exit Peter, and Also Agrippa; Rhoda Remains   163
Acts 13:1–14:28   Barnabas and Paul on Mission   175
Acts 15:1-35   The Great Council   189
Acts 15:36–16:5   Paul on His Own; Eunice and Timothy   203
Acts 16:6-34   A Drama in Three Acts Featuring Lydia and a Woman Prophet   215
Acts 16:35-40   Denouement   235
Acts 17:1-34   Ascending through Macedonia to the Areopagus   241
Acts 18:1-28   Prisca and Aquila, Corinth and Ephesus   255
Acts 19:1-20   Paul’s Work in Ephesus   265
Acts 19:21-41   Artemis of the Ephesians   271
Acts 20:1-38   Paul Completes His Mission   279
Acts 21:1-17   Going up to Jerusalem   289 
Acts 21:18-36   “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the City That Kills
                           the Prophets . . .”   295
Acts 21:37–23:11   Jerusalem Attempts to Kill Another Prophet   299
Acts 23:12-35  The Plot against Paul   307
Acts 24:1-27   Paul before Felix   311
Acts 25:1–26:32   Paul before Festus, Agrippa, and Berenice   319
Acts 27:1–28:10   Paul at Sea   331
Acts 28:11-31   “And So We Came to Rome”   341
Afterword: Liquid God   355
     Willie James Jennings
Works Cited   363
Index of Scripture References and Other Ancient Writings   385
Index of Names and Subjects   393

Editorial Reviews

"Linda Maloney writes on Acts with energy, accessibility, and a wonderfully wide horizon for the scholarship of the past and of the twenty-first century. She asks: 'What if it did not happen as we thought it did?' Then she brings conventional, feminist, post-colonial, queer, and Jewish perspectives to a lively, contemporary reading of Acts."
The Reverend Dr. Elizabeth J Smith AM, Mission Priest, Anglican Parish of The Goldfields, Diocese of Perth, Australia


"This commentary is commendable for several reasons. It is rigorous and detailed in historical-critical method but also sensitive to other interpretive orientations. It presents the materials in ways that are very responsible ethically, theologically, and historically."
Dr. Ronald Charles, Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, Canada

"It is a bracing, refreshing, effective feminist work."
WATER

 

"The Wisdom Commentary on Acts is a readable reference work that models collaborative and liberative interpretation making an important contribution to the work Luke himself undertook: crafting a Christian history that is expansive, inclusive, and hopeful."
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

From the Publisher