Editor Francis Martin collects patristic comment on the text of Acts in this volume of the ACCS.
The Acts of the Apostles–or more in keeping with the author’s intent, the Acts of the Ascended Lord–is part two of Luke’s story of “all that Jesus began to do and teach.” In it he recounts the expansion of the church as its witness spread from Jerusalem to all of Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
While at least forty early church authors commented on Acts, the works of only three survive in their entirety–John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Bede the Venerable’s Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles and a long Latin epic poem by Arator. In this volume, substantial selections from the first two of these appear with occasional excerpts from Arator alongside many excerpts from the fragments preserved in J. A. Cramer’s Catena in Acta SS. Apostolorum. Among the latter we find selections from Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Ephrem the Syrian, Didymus the Blind, Athanasius, Jerome, John Cassian, Augustine, Ambrose, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Theodoret of Cyr, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Cassiodorus and Hilary of Poitiers, some of which are here translated into English for the first time.
As readers, we find these early authors transmit life to us because their faith brought them into living and experiential contact with the realities spoken of in the Sacred Text.