Acts (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible | BTC)

Top Highlights

“The narrative of Acts, indeed the history of the early church in the following centuries, can be read as the process of making explicit what was implicit in this ‘gospel of the forty days,’ of giving ritual form and eventually written form to a tradition, attributed to none less than the risen Lord himself, that was oral in its origins and in its transmission.” (Page 40)

“Acts is a book of frenetic action amid a constantly shifting scene: conspiracy and intrigue and ambush, hostile confrontations and fierce conflicts sometimes to the death, rioting lynch mobs and personal violence (→28:31), ‘journeyings often’ (2 Cor. 11:26 AV) and incessant travel on an Odysseus-like scale all over the Mediterranean world (→27:24), complete with shipwreck and venomous serpents, ‘chains and imprisonment’ (Heb. 11:36), followed in at least two instances by a successful jailbreak, though only with the aid of celestial mechanics (5:17–20; 12:6–11; 16:26–28), famine and earthquake, crime and punishment (as well as a great deal of punishment, sometimes even capital punishment, without any real crime ever having been committed).” (Page 23)

“The central premise in this commentary series is that doctrine provides structure and cogency to scriptural interpretation. We trust in this premise with the hope that the Nicene tradition can guide us, however imperfectly, diversely, and haltingly, toward a reading of Scripture in which the right keys open the right doors.” (Page 16)

“he was bound with chains of iron, he daily set believers free from the chains” (Page 295)