What do you find in the Acts of the Apostles?

A:Acts of the Apostles is traditionally believed to be a history of the early Church. In support of Acts as a book of history, Sir William Ramsay stated "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians." This is now strongly disputed.

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Uta Ranke-Heinemann (Putting Away Childish Things) says that anyone familiar with recent scholarship would laugh at Ramsay's claim, and says that the whole book is a work of Propaganda aimed at Gentile Christians and Gentiles who have not yet become Christians. Hans Joachim Schoeps writes that Actshas been believed much too readily. Thus, there is a developing consensus amongst New Testament scholars that Acts is not what it seems.

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When we look more closely, we see that a hidden theme in Acts of the Apostles is a comparison between Peter and Paul, such that Peter always comes across as the more worthy apostle. For example, they are both reported as performing comparable miracles, but in each case Paul's miracle was matched by at least one even more awe-inspiring and worthy miracle performed by Peter. Paul had never mentioned performing miracles, but decades later we find Acts attributing miracles to him, with Peter always performing another, somewhat similar but greater miracle and doing greater service for the Church. .

According to Acts, Peter's first miraculous cure was of a man who had been lame since birth but was immediately cured by being commanded to stand and walk. Paul's first miraculous cure was improbably similar to Peter's first cure. Peter's miracle was performed in the name of Jesus, at the Temple, where the faithful saw the healed beggar praising God, and was the opportunity for some outstanding proselytising. Paul's first cure was clumsy and without apparent purpose, given that Paul did not tell the man about Jesus and he was even mistaken for a pagan god.

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In his epistles, Paul talked about having championed the right of gentile converts not to undergo circumcision and not to obey Jewish food laws, mentioning the lack of support he received from Peter. However, Acts makes it clear that these decisions were championed by Peter, and that Paul was not even present when Peter's proposal was accepted. The author of Acts, traditionally Luke but this is very unlikely, was rewriting history.