Acts

Acts. By Beverly Roberts Gaventa. ANTC. Nashville: Abingdon, 2003. 370 pp. $28.00 paper.

Princeton Theological Seminary professor Beverly Roberts Gaventa has provided us with a commentary that meets the goals of the Abingdon New Testament Commentaries series: "to exemplify the tasks and procedures of careful, critical biblical exegesis" (p. 15). Gaventa's approach to Acts is fairly distinctive, both for what it chooses to focus on-the literary narrative of the divine actions in Acts-and what it has decided consistently not to deal with: historical questions.

In the introduction Gaventa uses the imagery of a "Journey" to describe the experience of reading Acts, and she then makes the case for and explains this approach (pp. 25-59). She presents the theology of Acts via a description of the book's divine and human characters, who are "beyond and within the journey." She discusses the "locations for the Journey," that is, the contexts in which Acts needs to be understood: historical (introductory matters); canonical (Acts as part of Christian Scripture); and ecclesial (today's church). Proposing a simplified literary structure-"a map for the Journey"-Gaventa sees Acts, after a prologue (Acts 1:1-2:47), organized around two key events: the conversion of Cornelius (10:1-11:18) and Paul's speech before Festus and Agrippa (26:1-26). With a preparation and denouement section for each, the book of Acts' main sections divide chapters 3 to 28 at 15:35/36. The author concludes her introduction with a statement about her commentary's literary-theological versus historical orientation. Citing Amos Wilder's observation that all stories "posit a scheme or...