One of the things which struck me about our New Testament course this year was the idea of narrative criticism, i.e. reading the text critically (analytically that is – not ‘critically’ in the popular sense) as narrative. I’d never really thought about the gospels in that way before, and it’s been colouring the way I see things now. This goes for Acts as well: one of the big things about our Acts section was how to read it as theological history – not just history, but history with a particular theological point and purpose.
This past term we’ve been studying Acts in our home group (after having studied it for our New Testament course last term), and I think I’ve even been seeing new things in the text which I didn’t see there before. The way the narrative is structured is far more complex than just “this happened, then that happened…” which I’d always read it as. One such example of this is Paul’s name change in Acts 13:4-12. (more…)