The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

GERBERN S. OEGEMA 383
hypothesis of Ferdinand Hahn 4 and Odil H. Steck that Luke has taken
over an older and textually fixed tradition. 5
Although one can show that the author of Luke-Acts does share a
Deuteronomistic understanding of the history of Israel with that of his
predecessors retelling Israel’s history, this is far too general a conclusion
to serve as an argument for the hypothesis of Hahn and Steck, 6 which is
based on the assumption of a literary dependence of Luke on earlier
sources and be proved in a detailed and methodologically reflective way.
On the contrary, both passages (Acts 7 and 13) share with almost all
other summaries of the history of Israel an overall (and in the postbiblical
Jewish tradition possibly even generally adopted) tendency to structure
Israel’s history in such a way that it fits the argumentation of the
overall narrative structure and serves to edify the audience. Like his
predecessors and his contemporaries, the author of Luke-Acts should,
therefore, be understood as a theologically creative and religiously or
ecclesiologically concerned person. He is not merely an editor, but also a
creative author writing for an interested audience.
A comparable and also rather uncommon order of events as that of
Acts 7:2b–53, which in recent biblical scholarship mainly served as an
argument for Luke’s dependence on and redaction of older material,
finds an analogy in 1 Enoch 89 as well as in Josephus’ J.W. 5 §§ 379–412.
This means that the order of events in Acts 7:2b–53 no longer needs to
be explained as the result of the Lukan editing of older traditions, but can
very well be understood as the sovereign creation of the author. 7
Also, the actualizations and change of perspective found in the whole
of Acts 7 are quite common in other ancient Jewish summaries of the history
of Israel, and the author therefore seems to share them with his contemporaries
but has not necessarily taken them over.
Given this widespread use and popularity of summaries of the history
of Israel, it is, indeed, not necessary to argue that Luke would have
4. Ferdinand Hahn says that Luke-Acts builds upon a history of Israel similar to
that of the Hellenistic-Jewish community. See F. Hahn, “Der gegenwärtige Stand der
Erforschung der Apostelgeschichte. Kommentare und Aufsatzbände 1980–1985,”
ThRv 82 (1982), columns 177–90.
5. Odil H. Steck says that, in addition to Hahn’s hypothesis, Luke-Acts has applied
the Palestinian-Jewish tradition of a Deuteronomistic portrayal of history. See Odil H.
Steck, Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten. (WMANT 23, Neukirchen:
Neukirchener Verlagshaus, 1967).
6. See already the comments on the thesis of Albertus Frederik J. Klijn in Erich
Grässer, Forschungen zur Apostelgeschichte (WUNT 137; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001),
103, drawing from Erich Grässer, “Die Apostelgeschichte in der Forschung der
Gegenwart,” TRu 26 (1960): 93–167.
7. See Jeska, Geschichte.