The Speeches of Acts

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I have done some revising to Wikipedia's entry on the Acts of the Apostles. In addition to adding a few external links, I revised the section on the Speeches in Acts. Though some may conclude that Christians naively believe these are exhaustive transcripts of the entire speech, it is just as naive to simply dismiss them as the author's free creation. Different ancient writers had different practices when it came to "recording" speeches, but the ideal was likely for the writer to use sources if he had them and to impart the sense of what was actually said. Some ancient writers even criticized others for taking too much liberty in writing speeches.

In an article hosted at the Christian CADRE site I provide additional reasons for believing that the author of Acts followed the more conservative route in recording speeches. That is, although he probably did not provide exhaustive transcripts he did use sources to tell us the sense of what was said.

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