The "We" Passages In Acts

Starting in 16:10, the author of Acts uses the term "we" in a way that suggests his participation in the events being narrated. If the author did participate in the events, some significant implications follow. Under that scenario, the author of Acts, who also wrote the third gospel, was a companion of the apostle Paul, had met other important figures in early church history, such as James (Acts 21:18), and was an eyewitness of many significant events, like some of Paul's miracles.

But the traditional interpretation of the "we" passages has been challenged. It's sometimes suggested, for example, that the author of Acts may have been citing what another source reported. The "we" was somebody else's language, and Acts' author didn't edit it out when using that source's material. Or the "we" may be some sort of literary device meant to enhance the reader's experience without any intention of suggesting that the author of Acts participated in the events in question. And so on.

The third volume in Craig Keener's commentary on Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2014) recently came out. Here's some of what he wrote there about the "we" passages:

These appearances of the narrator are hardly random; although they do not represent the most "important" or exotic scenes (where a fictitious witness would be expected to insert himself), they exhibit geographic continuity (as one would expect for a genuine witness) from Troas to Philippi (16:10-16), Philippi to Jerusalem (20:6-21:18), and Judea to Rome (27:1-28:16)....It is no coincidence that the "we" narratives provide the most detailed accounts in Acts (the missionaries' brief time in Philippi receives more detailed attention than eighteen months in Corinth and as much as two years in Asia [18:11; 19:10]); that scholars often attribute the many accurate details of travel in 21:1-3, 7-8 to a diary; and that Paul's two years in Judea (21:17-27:1) are the most detailed portion of the book....

That the "we" represents either the author or his source remains the majority position [among scholars]...

Sometimes a writer consistently assumes the role of a fictitious narrator, but normally pervasively throughout the narrative, as in Apuleius's Metamorphoses or Petronius's Satyricon. Novelists preferred first-person narration, but in a way that keeps the protagonist narrator central to the action, through most of the work. By contrast, Luke intrudes his presence only rarely, and he is not writing a novel. Like Luke, other historians introduced themselves more sporadically - and only when present. Most pseudepigraphic works selected narrators centuries before their own time....

A majority of scholars reject the literary-fiction approach. As Porter notes, the literary-fiction interpretation is probably "the least satisfactory and least probable of the proposed solutions." The narrator rarely intrudes in the narrative; the first person refers to Luke himself in Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1, with no reason to believe that this first-person usage is fabricated (especially since he does not place himself among the major witnesses, Luke 1:2-3). Further, if Luke were simply inventing the narrator's presence, we would expect it throughout the book and on more consequential matters than, for instance, a voyage from Troas to Philippi (Acts 16:11-12). The first-person novels to which Acts is compared use the first person pervasively; if Luke were following a supposed novelistic convention, why would he add "we" so rarely, and often in less controversial sections rather than where an eyewitness might prove most helpful?...

Any ancient writers inserting themselves into the story world in a work of history invited vicious critique on the charge of writing bad history....

One specific approach has been the claim that a fictitious "we" was conventional in Greek sea-voyage narratives. It is, however, problematic. Aside from the questionable relevance of this convention to the portions where the missionaries are not at sea (Acts 16:10; 12-16; 20:7-8; 21:7-17; 28:14-16), there simply was no such convention...

it is curious that "we" is missing in a considerable number of Acts' sea voyages (13:4-5, 13; 14:20b-28; 15:39; 17:14; 18:18, 21-22). (Many other ancient sea voyages also lack this allegedly conventional feature of "we.")...

The style and vocabulary of these ["we"] sections, however, are Lukan (the itinerary being comparable especially to other itinerary material in Acts), suggesting that if a diary is in view [as the source of the "we" material], it is the author's own....

if Luke is such a careful editor of his sources (and he is), why would he allow another's "we" to stand in his work, which his audience would naturally assume included himself as the author (as "we" normally did and does in works)?...

No ancient reader without prior information would take "we" as simply designating some eyewitness source; on the basis of the usage of nearly every historical source in antiquity, readers would assume that it meant authorial participation....Nor does Luke treat any of his other sources the way critics have supposed that he treated his "we" source; otherwise, we might expect "we" in the Gospel as well, where he claims to have eyewitness sources (Luke 1:2). "We" signals not simply any eyewitness source but the author's presence....

Whatever the genre of Luke's work, speakers within his narratives include themselves in first-person-plural claims. Why should we suddenly interpret the expression differently when the narrator is the one speaking?

(2350-7, 2359-60, 2368)

As far as I know, the earliest interpretation of Acts, perhaps even a universal interpretation in the earliest centuries, viewed Luke's "we" as including him in the events being narrated. See, for example, Irenaeus' comments on Luke's relationship with Paul in the third book of his treatise Against Heresies (e.g., 3:14:1).