Bible Books
A Modern Classic
The Acts of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.
Anchor Bible Series 31 (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 861 pp., $45.00
“A modern commentary in the classic style”—that’s how Joseph Fitzmyer describes his dense volume on the Acts of the Apostles in the highly respected Anchor Bible series. By this, he means that his commentary employs the historical-critical method “to [set] forth the religious and theological message that the author sought to convey” (that’s the classic part), while at the same time explaining that message “in an actualized form”—that is, in a way that makes sense to modern believers.
The historical-critical method seeks to understand how the book came into existence and to place it in its historical context. It has become fashionable to decry this approach to the Bible as having little or nothing to offer those who seek religious nourishment from the biblical texts. Here, however, is a renowned practitioner of the method whose ultimate aim is to make the ancient text speak to today’s believers and seekers of religious truth.
Does Fitzmyer deliver?
His is indeed a classic commentary—too classic, some readers may find. Following the format of more recent Anchor Bible commentaries, the volume includes Fitzmyer’s translation of Acts and an introduction that discusses the usual questions of title, authorship, date, purpose, sources, use of the Old Testament, composition and form-critical analysis. There are extensive notes on particular verses, bibliographies and maps. The volume is a reliable source for those who want a summary of the more secure, reasonably assured conclusions about Acts. Thus, for instance, on the “We-sections” in the second part of Acts (where the author refers to himself and, perhaps, a companion in the plural), Fitzmyer surveys a number of different opinions but plumps for the well-accepted view that the “we” was borrowed from an earlier source; he argues though that the source was “a diary or travel notes that the author himself (Luke) would have kept.” On the historicity of Acts’ account of Paul’s activities, he writes that these passages are a “good example of a Hellenistic historical monograph.” According to Fitzmyer, this “does not guarantee, of course, the historicity of every Lucan statement or episode, but it reveals that what is recounted in Acts is substantially more trustworthy from a historical point of view than not.”
Fitzmyer fulfills his promise to expound on Luke’s religious and theological message for modern readers, albeit very discreetly. About the risen Christ’s commission to his apostles at the opening of Acts (“[Jesus] said to them, ‘It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has determined by his own authority. You will receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, even to the end of the earth’” [Acts 1:7–8]), Fitzmyer notes: “That means that Christian followers are always to proclaim the Word about him and bear witness to him until he comes.” On the summary account of life and worship in Acts 2:42–47 (“They would continue to devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to a communal form of life, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers …”), Fitzmyer notes: “Luke has included this description of early Christian life as an ideal that he would desire to be characteristic of all Christians. It may be an idyllic description, but it highlights the elements that should be part of genuine Christian life: harmony, reverent care for one another, formal and informal prayer in common, and celebration of the Lord’s Supper.”
Fitzmyer’s “actualization” of Luke’s message is at least one step removed from a homily, but it is nevertheless an important and valuable element in the commentary. This will make this volume especially useful and attractive to preachers and teachers in preparing sermons and instructions.
As author of the Anchor Bible series’ commentaries on Luke’s gospel and the Epistle to the Romans, Joseph Fitzmyer was an obvious choice for this volume. He wears his learning lightly and makes it available in a clear and direct style. There may well be more adventurous commentators and commentaries, but for someone looking for a good, solid take on the Acts of the Apostles, this is certainly one to recommend.
Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth
Carol Delaney
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998) 348 pp., $49.95 (hardback), $21.95 (paperback)
Why is the willingness to sacrificially murder (rather than passionately protect and preserve) a child the quintessential model of faith for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the modern secular cultures these religions undergird? What allows fathers to assume that children are theirs to sacrifice in the first place? These are the questions that animate Carol Delaney’s anthropological investigation into the social legacy of the biblical story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.
The book opens with what Delaney calls “the case for the prosecution.” An anthropologist at Stanford University, Delaney holds the Abraham story complicit in serious crimes against humanity. It has, in her words, “shaped the realities we live by,” including a learned reluctance to question the authority of fathers—whether parents, priests, politicians or military commanders—coupled with a willingness to accept the inevitable betrayal of children (and women). For Delaney, it is no coincidence that the very societies that embrace the biblical model of child murder as a paradigm of faith also tolerate children living in abject poverty throughout the world; children suffering untold physical, emotional and sexual violence; and children being sent off by the hundreds of thousands “to fight old men’s battles” in war after war. It is also no coincidence, she suggests, that in 1990, in California, a devout Christian man took his youngest child to a local park and slit her throat as a sacrificial offering because “God told him to.” A description of the subsequent murder trial and Delaney’s interviews with those involved serve as touchstones throughout the book and provide insight into the continued power of the Abraham myth in contemporary culture.
Delaney devotes one chapter each to Judaism’s, Christianity’s and Islam’s respective uses and defenses of the Abraham-Isaac tradition. She argues that similar primitive and misguided mythologies about paternity, procreation and gender underlie the treatment of the story in all three traditions—traditions that, in turn, perpetuate destructive social practices. She then indicts Freud (high priest of modernity) for neglecting Abraham (in favor of Oedipus) in developing his theories of psychological development—a fateful move that, Delaney suggests, “allowed the story of Abraham and its values to persist unchecked.”
Many scholars would be wary of charging a single biblical myth with aiding and abetting such a vast array of lethal power structures and ideologies as Delaney catalogues throughout the book. Yet she marshals extensive evidence and prosecutes her case with great care and competence. Moreover, after decades of fundamentalist, right-wing claims that biblically based family values are the proper cure for the ills of the modern world, Delaney provides a compelling counter-argument that it is not the decline of such patriarchal family values, but rather their pervasiveness, that is and has been so morally devastating. Delaney is also to be commended for daring to take such a broad perspective, and what the book sacrifices in depth, nuance, complexity and the history and richness of the texts and cultures examined, it more than makes up for in its compelling and provocative arguments for the prosecution. Whether or not her readers are ultimately willing to render the guilty verdict she seeks, the questions and challenges she poses throughout this “trial” are ones well worth our deepest consideration.