Journeying through Acts: A Literary-Cultural Reading

Journeying through Acts explores the literary and cultural aspects of Acts and offers a fresh reading of this dramatic volume. Acts is unique in the New Testament canon in part because it is not a gospel or a Pauline letter. It presents a dynamic story of the spread of the Christian gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. The gospel was propelled by the earliest followers of the risen and ascended Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, who is arguably the chief protagonist in the narrative. Spencer's reading offers a traveler's guide through the book of Acts. He charts narrative featuresplot development, character building, and shifting points of viewand explores cultural scenarios that affect the events in Actshonor/shame contests, patronclient relations, and puritypollution boundaries. Within this literarycultural framework, Spencer undertakes to map the temporal, spatial, and social settings of each segment of the Acts journey. Journeying through Acts offers students, pastors, scholars, and lay readers a satisfyingalthough by no means exhaustiveunderstanding of the overall narrative of Acts in light of recent academic scholarship.