Informazione e ricostruzione negli Atti degli Apostoli. Note di lettura

This paper presents some annotations on the book of the Acts of the Apostles, carried out along a “continual reading” of the text, and with the aim of verifying a historical-literary hypothesis. The problem of the sources used in the Acts of the Apostles cannot be resolved with the two models normally proposed, i.e. that of the “written sources” (particularly the Antiochian Source for chs. 6-15, and the Diary of the Journey for chs. 16-28) and that of the “tradition sources”, for the most part oral ones, handed down by the Churches and the local communities. This fact invites us to formulate a simple hypothesis, namely, that the author of the Acts reconstructed or restored the history by gathering direct or indirect information about the characters of his narrative. Among them are to be mentioned not only eyewitnesses, but also their friends, relatives, disciples, and collaborators. The present “annotations of reading” testify an effort to retrieve the “direct information” that Paul used as the basis for his historical-theological project. The problems we met are many, because it is not always easy to distinguish an actual event from the work of the historian who narrated it. Wherever possible, solutions are proposed, also keeping in mind the opinions available in notable commentaries of the Acts. In some cases, however, it is practically impossible to reach a satisfying solution.