Peter and Paul in Acts: A Comparison of Their Ministries. David Spell

the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. At the Jordan the Spirit’s descent was in bodily form, and at Pentecost his presence was seen in the dividing of tongues similar to fire and in the disciples’ speaking in other tongues. The similarity between what happened at Jesus’ messianic anointing and at Pentecost strongly indicates that the disciples received the power of the Spirit by which Jesus had preached the gospel, healed the sick, and cast out demons.”

110 Evans, 70, “Luke wishes to make it clear that Jesus’ ministry begins in the power of the Spirit as he taught in their synagogues (see 1:35; 3:22; 4:1), which parallels the inauguration of the apostolic preaching and teaching in Acts 2.”

111 Ibid., 72, “What makes all of this preaching so ‘unacceptable’ is that the people of Jesus’ time expected Messiah to come and destroy Israel’s enemies, not minister to them.”

112 John R. W. Stott, The Message of Acts: The Spirit, the Church and the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990) 133–38.

113 Morris, 36.

114 Evans, 169, “Whereas the Twelve may represent the reconstitution of the twelve tribes of Israel, the Seventy may represent the seventy Gentile nations of the world, founded by the sons of Noah after the flood . . .”

115 Fred Jonkman, “The Missionary Methods of the Apostle Paul,” http://www.thirdmill.org/paul2/missionary_methods.asp (Oct. 11, 2001) 1, “It was Paul’s mission activities (Acts 13–28) that contributed remarkably towards the Christian church’s move from the limited sphere of Judaism to the broader frame of the Gentile world. It then becomes, for all religious history, a preeminent model for missionary outreach.”

116 Evans, 161, Luke says that Jesus “resolutely set His face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9: 51) This has several Old Testament parallels. One of the most obvious is Ezekiel 21:2, “Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem, and speak against the sanctuaries, and prophesy against the land of Israel.” Moessner sees this final journey as more of a type of a new Exodus. “Luke will tell his readers that as Jesus progresses through the “‘towns and villages of Israel, teaching in their streets”’ (13:22) the crowds continue to swell around him until these ‘“myriads”’ become a ‘“multitude of crowds”’ (11:29; 12:1; 14:25). As the prophet like Moses Jesus gathers all Israel on their Exodus to Jerusalem,” David P. Moessner, ‘“The Christ Must Suffer’: New Light on the Jesus-Peter, Stephen, Paul Parallels in Luke-Acts,” Novum Testamentum 28 (1986) 239.

117 Arrington, 209, “The solemn prophetic admonitions were understood by Paul to be the definite guidance of the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem, the place where the purpose of God would be carried out.

118 Luke records that after Paul was seized by the mob, “they dragged him out of the temple; and immediately the doors were shut.” Bruce sees significance in the shutting of the temple doors. “For Luke himself, this may have been the moment when the Jerusalem temple ceased to fill the honorable role hitherto ascribed to it in his two-fold history. The exclusion of God’s message and messenger from the house once called by his name sealed its doom: it was now ripe for the destruction which Jesus had predicted for it many years before (Luke 21:6),” The Book of the Acts, 410.

119 Marshall, Luke: Historian and Theologian, 18.This is in direct contradiction with C. K. Barrett who does not feel that the author of Acts was a very good theologian. See note 45 above.

120 Martin, 377.

121 Evans, 17.

122 J. Dawsey, “The Literary Unity of Luke-Acts: Questions of Style—A Task for Literary Critics,” New Testament Studies 35 (1989) 50.

123 C. F. Evans, 121.

124 Darrell L. Bock, Luke, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996) 42, “Theophilius was probably a new believer, who as a Gentile found himself in what had started out as a Jewish movement.” See also, Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles, 56, “Theophilus was probably already a Christian, and Luke wrote his book to help him and others like him to have a reliable account of the beginnings of Christianity.”

125 Morris, 66.

126 Hiebert, 130, “While writing for the personal benefit of Theophilus (Luke 1:4), Luke clearly intended for his work to have a much wider circulation.”

127 Ibid., 132, He goes on to say that Luke’s “ultimate aim is to convey these truths to Gentile readers and to awaken and deepen their faith in Jesus as the God-sent Savior for all mankind.”

128 W. Ward Gasque, “A Fruitful Field: Recent Study of the Acts of the Apostles,” Interpretation 42 (1988) 119–20.

129 Hans Conzelman, The Theology of St. Luke, trans. Geoffrey Buswell, (New York: Harper & Row, 1961) 131.

130 John Navone, “Three Aspects of the Lucan Theology of History,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 3 (1973) 115.

131 Conzleman, 132, “As the End is still far away, the adjustment to a short time of waiting is replaced by a ‘Christian life’ of long duration, which requires ethical regulation and is no longer dependent upon a definite termination.”

132 Hiebert, 133.

133 Luke 23: 4, 14, 22.

134 Acts 23:29; 25:25; 26:31.

135 Marie-Eloise Rosenblatt, Paul the Accused: His Portrait in the Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1995) xvii.

136 Ibid., 95.

137 Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles, 21–22, “We are not denying that Luke had an apologetic motive in the composition of Luke-Acts, especially in the case of Acts. But it is a subordinate aim as compared with the main theme of the presentation of the historical basis for the Christian