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Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists. By Richard I. Pervo. Santa Rosa, Calif: Polebridge Press, 2006. xiv + 513 pp. $47.50 (paper).
Most commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles locate its authorship between 80 and 100 ce, yet few offer more than a handful of paragraphs to explain why. For Richard Pervo this apparent yet imprecise consensus "represents more of a political compromise than a hypothesis established by rigorously examined and argued criteria" (p. 343). Through rigorous examination Pervo contends that 115 CE is a more likely date. His purpose extends beyond reconfiguring timelines of the New Testament writings, for he insists that attention to the date of Acts must be integral to any inteq3retation of Acts and essential to any understanding of the book's place within the history of early Christianity.
The heart of the thesis concerns Luke's use of sources. After establishing that the author of Acts used neither the Septuagint nor Mark in uniform ways, Pervo offers two lengthy chapters maintaining that Luke drew from the...