Initial Reactions to Richard Pervo's Acts

Update: I rewrote the third paragraph in response to this comment by Richard I. Pervo.

Those who are familiar with Pervo's earlier work (and with me), will surmise correctly that we don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. But Pervo's new Acts commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009) is excellent--the sort of well-written, detailed, insight-filled and critical work we have come to expect from Hermeneia. It meets the #1 criterion for a good commentary in that it addresses my questions. And, like C.K. Barrett's ICC commentary, it is funny. For a commentary, that is high praise indeed.

My biggest complaint so far is that Pervo doesn't bother to defend his late dating of Acts, pointing readers instead to his 2006 monograph on the subject. Unfortunately, I can't buy Dating Acts this year, and I don't have time to read it anyway. A more detailed presentation of the case for a second century date is in order in a commentary of this size.

Pervo does explain his classification of Acts as an ancient historical novel or romance popular history that draws on conventions more commonly associated with ancient fiction: According to Pervo, an omniscient narrator, miracles, and the lack of a claim to objectivity are more typical of ancient novels fiction than ancient history writing. But It is worth noting that these characteristics were also typical of the OT narratives Luke modeled his story after. In my view, it is more helpful to think of Luke's story as apologetic historiography (some of which Pervo would include as popular history), but apologetic historiography in a biblical style.