Деяния апостолов. Главы 9-28: Историко-филологический комментарий

Paul’s letters are addressed to Christian communities, while in the Book of Acts he speaks mostly in front of those whom he is trying to convert. As F. F. Bruce noted, commenting on Paul’s Areopagus speech in Acts, «it is underestimating Paul’s versatility, his capacity for being ‘all things to all men’, to think that he could not presented the essence of Romans 1-3 to pagans along the lines of Acts 17:22-31»[8].

The corner-stone of Luke’s theology is belief in the God of Israel as the Creator and in Jesus as the Messiah and Saviour. For him Christianity is a missionary religion which is guided and directed by the Holy Spirit. Christianity recognizes itself as a continuation of Israel and sees its mission to the Gentiles as a fulfilment of Israel’s mission and as an integral part of Israel’s salvation. It is through this prism that the author of the Book of Acts views the beginnings and early history of Christianity. His theological contribution is to be found, «not so much in the treatment of particular doctrines as in understanding of the possibility and course of Christian history and especially of the Christian mission»[9].

The main part of the book (p. 66-594) consists of commentary. The text of the Book of Acts is discussed mostly from the philological and historical points of view, though theological issues are sometimes touched upon as well. The history of textual transmission is of great interest to the author, so attestations of particular readings in different manuscript families are discussed at length throughout the text.

Special attention is given to documentary evidence, above all to inscriptions. In one case, the discussion of the epigraphical evidence for the Italian cohort mentioned in Acts 10:1 turns out to be so detailed and lengthy that the author assigned a special excursus to it (p. 123-141).

Because the target audience of this book is not only students of history, philology and theology, but a wider readership, for their benefit all Greek, Latin and Hebrew quotations have been translated into Russian.

The author of the book owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the staff of the library of Tyndale House (Cambridge, UK) on which friendly premises most of the research for the book was done. The book is gratefully dedicated to all author’s friends in Britain.