Claiming Places: Reading Acts through the Lens of Ancient Colonization

How is Acts of the Apostles - its form and features - to be understood in light of the work’s ancient Mediterranean cultural context? In the present study, Eric C. Moore offers a fresh response to this much-debated question, arguing for the utility of ancient colonization as an analytic lens for reading Acts, a story about the origins and replication of early Christianity. He explores how in narrating his account, Luke draws on a common stock of foundation motifs employed by ancient sources, textual and material alike, to glorify community beginnings.