The book of Acts is a small anthology of individual literary genres. The list includes hero story, adventure story, travel story, conversion story, and miracle story. Drama also figures prominently: there are 32 speeches in Acts.
Following the story line becomes easy when one realizes that the book of Acts is structured on a cyclic principle in which a common pattern keeps getting repeated:
- Christian leaders arise and preach the gospel;
- Listeners are converted and added to the church;
- Opponents (often Jewish but sometimes Gentile) begin to persecute the Christian leaders; and
- God intervenes to rescue the leaders or otherwise protect the church.
While this pattern is most obvious in the first half of the book, it extends in modified form to the journeys of Paul, whose repeated buffetings are followed by the expansion of the church.
The book of Acts is noteworthy for its narrative qualities. It is the report of an adventure, replete with arrests, imprisonments, beatings, riots, narrow escapes, a resurrection from death, a shipwreck, trial scenes, and rescues.
Places play a key role in Acts. The places that matter most are the great cities of the Mediterranean region in the first century. Geography assumes a symbolic as well as literal importance, as Jerusalem, where the story begins, symbolizes the Jewish religion from which Christianity emerged, and Rome, where the story ends, symbolizes the Gentile world to which Christianity gravitates as the early history of the church unfolds.
Out of a large body of available data, storytellers select the details that fit their design and purpose. It is a plausible premise that sometimes Luke chose to give representative examples of categories of experiences: examples of miraculous healings that were no doubt duplicated many times (e.g., Acts 3:1–10; 19:11–12), a specimen of preaching in the temple (Acts 3:11–26) and preaching to Greek intellectuals (Acts 17:16–34), an example of a martyrdom (ch. 7), and instances of individuals being converted (e.g., a Jew in Acts 9:1–19 and an Ethiopian in Acts 8:26–38) and of groups being converted (e.g., in Jerusalem in Acts 2:37–41 and in Greek Ephesus in Acts 19:17–20).
