Fact, Fiction and the Genre of Acts

Abstract

This paper explores the boundaries between fact and fiction in ancient literature. The historians effectively created the concept of ‘fiction’ in Greek literature by defining what could be incontrovertibly established as ‘fact’ by accepted rationalistic criteria. Anything beyond these limits (tales involving distant places, or the distant past, or divine intervention) was widely perceived as belonging to the realm of ‘fiction’. To readers from this background, Acts would fall uncomfortably on the boundary: much of the narrative would sound like fiction, but there is a disturbing undercurrent which suggests that it might after all be intended as fact.