The Prophecy of Christ and his Witnesses according to the Discourses of Acts

Let us draw familiar battle lines at the outset by adhering to some ofttested propositions concerning the speeches of Acts: that they are mainly conceptions and instruments of Lucan historiography; that they therefore argue the case of the author as historian, not the ostensible cause of the speaker in the situation recounted; that their audiences are fictitious representations of the stages of the Christian mission programmed in Acts 1. 8; finally that, like other Lucan repetitions, the speeches have a complementary and mutually explanatory function in the author's sustained dialogue with his reader.