"This commentary on Acts of the Apostles provides a feminist interpretation of Scripture in serious, scholarly engagement with the whole text, not only those texts that explicitly mention women. It addresses not only issues of gender but also those of power, authority, ethnicity, racism, and classism"--
2023 Catholic Media Association Third Place Award, Scripture Academic Studies
The Acts of the Apostles, the earliest work of its kind to have survived from Christian antiquity, is not history in the modern sense, nor is it about what we call the church. Written at least half a century after the time it describes, it is a portrait of the Movement of Jesus followers as it developed between 30 and 70 CE. More important, it is a depiction of the Movement of what Jesus wanted: the inbreaking of the reign of God. In this commentary, Linda Maloney, Ivoni Richter Reimer, and a host of other contributing voices look at what the text does and does not say about the roles of the original members of the Movement in bringing it toward fruition, with a special focus on those marginalized by society, many of them women. The author of Acts wrote for followers of Jesus in the second century and beyond, contending against those who wanted to break from the community of Israel and offering hope against hope, like Israels prophets before him.
Recenzijas
"Linda Maloney writes on Acts with energy, accessibility, and a wonderfully wide horizon for the scholarship of the past and of the twenty-first century. She asks: 'What if it did not happen as we thought it did?' Then she brings conventional, feminist, post-colonial, queer, and Jewish perspectives to a lively, contemporary reading of Acts." The Reverend Dr. Elizabeth J Smith AM, Mission Priest, Anglican Parish of The Goldfields, Diocese of Perth, Australia "This commentary is commendable for several reasons. It is rigorous and detailed in historical-critical method but also sensitive to other interpretive orientations. It presents the materials in ways that are very responsible ethically, theologically, and historically." Dr. Ronald Charles, Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, Canada "It is a bracing, refreshing, effective feminist work." WATER "The Wisdom Commentary on Acts is a readable reference work that models collaborative and liberative interpretation making an important contribution to the work Luke himself undertook: crafting a Christian history that is expansive, inclusive, and hopeful." The Catholic Biblical Quarterly "Scholar, editor, translator, and ordained Episcopal priest, Linda Maloney has joined her considerable skills with those of Brazilian New Testament professor and Lutheran pastor Ivoni Richter Reimer to produce another important contribution in the Wisdom Commentary series." The Bible Today "Critical but not overly technical, this accessible commentary will be especially useful for students and preachers and scholars." Religious Studies Review
Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
List of Contributors xv
Foreword: Come Eat of My Bread . . . and Walk in the Ways of
Wisdom xix
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Editors Introduction to Wisdom Commentary:
She Is a Breath of the Power of God (Wis 7:25) xxiii
Barbara E. Reid, OP
Authors Acknowledgments xliii
Authors Introduction: Translating Worlds xlv
Acts 1:1-4a Preface 1
Acts 1:4b-14 Ascension 7
Acts 1:15-26 Making Up the Twelve (Male) Apostles 19
Acts 2:1-13 Pentecost: The Spirit Falls on the Whole Company
of Women and Men 25
Acts 2:14-40 Peters Pentecost Speech 31
Acts 2:41-47 The Jerusalem Community: First Summary 39
Acts 3:14:4 Peter and John in the Temple with a Man
Who Cannot Walk 43
Acts 4:5-22 The Apostles on Trial 51
Acts 4:23-37 The Movement Gathered in Harmony 57
Acts 5:1-11 A Counter-Example: Ananias and Sapphira 61
Acts 5:12-42 Peter and the Apostles Confront the Authorities
for the Last Time 67
Acts 6:1-7 The Widows Crisis and the Choosing of the Seven 73
Acts 6:8-15 Stephens Ministry 83
Acts 7:18:1a Stephens Defense and Martyrdom 91
Acts 8:1b-25 The Mission Begins 103
Acts 8:26-40 The Ethiopian 111
Acts 9:1-31 The Calling of Saul 123
Acts 9:32-43 Peter on Mission: Tabitha Is Raised 133
Acts 10:111:18 God Shows No Partiality 143
Acts 11:19-30 Peace and Growth 155
Acts 12:1-25 Exit Peter, and Also Agrippa; Rhoda Remains 163
Acts 13:114:28 Barnabas and Paul on Mission 175
Acts 15:1-35 The Great Council 189
Acts 15:3616:5 Paul on His Own; Eunice and Timothy 203
Acts 16:6-34 A Drama in Three Acts Featuring Lydia and a Woman Prophet
215
Acts 16:35-40 Denouement 235
Acts 17:1-34 Ascending through Macedonia to the Areopagus 241
Acts 18:1-28 Prisca and Aquila, Corinth and Ephesus 255
Acts 19:1-20 Pauls Work in Ephesus 265
Acts 19:21-41 Artemis of the Ephesians 271
Acts 20:1-38 Paul Completes His Mission 279
Acts 21:1-17 Going up to Jerusalem 289
Acts 21:18-36 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the City That Kills
the Prophets . . . 295
Acts 21:3723:11 Jerusalem Attempts to Kill Another Prophet 299
Acts 23:12-35 The Plot against Paul 307
Acts 24:1-27 Paul before Felix 311
Acts 25:126:32 Paul before Festus, Agrippa, and Berenice 319
Acts 27:128:10 Paul at Sea 331
Acts 28:11-31 And So We Came to Rome 341
Afterword: Liquid God 355
Willie James Jennings
Works Cited 363
Index of Scripture References and Other Ancient Writings 385
Index of Names and Subjects 393
Linda M. Maloney received her PhD in American studies from St. Louis University (1968) and her ThD in New Testament from the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen (1990), with Prof. Dr. Gerhard Lohfink as her Doktorvater. She is the first woman in the history of the Roman Catholic faculty at Tübingen to earn the ThD in Scripture. Having taught American history at several universities in the 1970s (and cofounded the Womens Studies Program at the University of South Carolina), she joined the faculty of the Franciscan School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union from 1989 to 1995. Thereafter, until 2007, she was academic editor at Liturgical Press. She was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 2003. Since 2005 she has served churches in the Diocese of Vermont and in the Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of Montreal. She has been active since 1986 as a translator of books on Scripture, theology, and liturgy, mainly from German to English, including four volumes in the Hermeneia series from Fortress Press. Ivoni Richter Reimer is a native of Brazil. She earned her ThD at the University of Kassel in Germany in 1990, working with Luise Schottroff. Her dissertation, translated into English (1995) as Women in the Acts of the Apostles: A Feminist Liberation Perspective, has been published in four languages. Since 1991 she has been a professor of theology and religious studies in Rio de Janeiro at the Universidade Metodista and Faculdade Teológica Batista do Sul do Brasil and then in Goiānia/Goiįs at the Pontificia Universidade de Goiįs, influencing three generations of students of feminist liberation theology and exegesis. She is also a Lutheran pastor, active in community building and developing leadership. Willie James Jennings is associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University Divinity School. His specializations also include postcolonial and race theory. He received his BA from Calvin College, his MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, and his PhD in systematic theology from Duke University. He is the author of prize-winning works, including The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press); After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Eerdmans), the 2020 Publishers Weekly book of the year; and Acts in the Belief series (Westminster John Knox). In 2015 he received the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his groundbreaking work on race and Christianity.
