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While Luke provides us with excellent historical information in the book of Acts regarding the history of the early church, correlating the information in Acts with historical chronology in general is a difficult task indeed. There are few dates that we can correlate with certainty, and many times events are described without reference to duration of time. On account of these difficulties, the honest Biblical historian recognizes that many events cannot be dated with great specificity, but over a range of time. We recognize that Luke and others could easily have provided the dates if so desired, and we ought to recognize something from that; nevertheless, there is some profit and understanding to be gained in considering the dating of the events of the early church, especially in relation to one another. Let us, then, attempt to date the events of the early church through Paul's departure from Corinth in Acts 18.

For this period we have only two historically fixed points along with certain timeframes established by the authors. The two historically fixed points are found in Acts 12:19b-23, where Luke records the death of Herod Agrippa I after the arrest and deliverance of Peter and just before the first missionary journey; this event is recorded by other authors (cf. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15.9.6, Wars of the Jews 1.21.5-8) and occurred in 44. On account of this, we know that the famine of Acts 11:18 must have occurred between 41, the accession of Claudius, and 44. In Acts 18:12-16, we learn that after Paul preached in Corinth for eighteen months he was brought before the proconsul Gallio. Gallio (Lucius Junius Gallio) was the brother of the famous Roman philosopher Seneca (Dio Cassius, 60.24), and an inscription found at Delphi in Greece establishes that he was proconsul of Achaia after the twenty-sixth acclamation of the Emperor Claudius as imperator (Tenney, Exploring New Testament Culture 276). This places the inscription within the year 52, which makes it likely that he began his time as proconsul in 51. Poor health, however, cut his time in office short (Seneca, Epistulae Morales 104.1). We can establish, then, that Paul stood before Gallio either in 51 or 52.

The main timeframes that will guide our overall discussion are found in Galatians 1:15-18 and Galatians 2:1-2, referring to events in the life of Paul:

But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days.
Then after the space of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went up by revelation; and I laid before them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles but privately before them who were of repute, lest by any means I should be running, or had run, in vain.

While it is somewhat difficult to precisely correlate Paul in Galatians and Luke in Acts, we get the impression that there is a three year span between the events in Acts 9:1-22 and Acts 9:23-30, and then a further fourteen years between these events and the events in Acts 15. These dates will allow us to put a chronology of sorts together.

On the basis of the material at hand, we will work backwards in time. We have established that Paul was brought forth to Gallio around the year 52 (Acts 18:12-16). In Acts 18:11, Luke establishes that Paul was in Corinth for eighteen months. Therefore, depending on the time of year in which Paul was brought before Gallio, Paul arrived in Corinth at any point between the middle of 50 through the middle of 51. We do not know the exact amount of time that Paul spent going through parts of Asia Minor and parts of Greece (Acts 16-18); we know that he spent around 3-5 weeks in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-10), but that is about all. He could have spent anything from a few months to a couple of years in these places. We then date the second missionary journey sometime between 49-52. This would place the Jerusalem conference of Acts 15 between 48-50.

This is consistent with the evidence that we have from the other end. In another article we established that the best evidence for the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus places those events in the year 30, and so therefore the church begins on Pentecost 30. If we allow a few months for the events contained in Acts 2-6, the earliest point at which Stephen was murdered and Saul of Tarsus was converted would be 31. From 31, three years (Galatians 1:15-18) would be 34, and an additional 14 (Galatians 2:1-2) would be 48. The end of the range for these events is most likely 33, since three years from 33 is 36 and 14 additional years is 50, and we must allow some time for the second missionary journey to get to Corinth in 52. By putting this all together, we can provide a historically likely chronology for the book of Acts:

As we can see, most events can only be dated over a range of a few years. We each may have a feeling of about when a given event took place, but we cannot nail down a precise year with the evidence we have supplied.

Some may object to this chronology on the basis of the dating of Galatians in terms of Acts. It is believed by some that Paul speaks in Galatians 2:1-2 of his trip to Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 11:29-30, and that the "fourteen years" begins at his conversion. This view, however, is not the most historically likely: first of all, even if we take the famine as occurring in 44, fourteen years goes back all the way to 30, providing a frame of only six months for all the events in Acts 2-9. Furthermore, there is no textual indication that the fourteen years is to be read as going back to his conversion: Paul simply says "after fourteen years," and the natural antecedent of the fourteen years is his first trip to Jerusalem, not his conversion (cf. Galatians 1:18-24). This view is not historically likely; it is more likely that since Paul's visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11:29-30 had no value in Paul's defense before the Galatians, he simply overlooked the trip and went directly to the major event, the conference in Jerusalem in Acts 15. As we have seen, dating Galatians 2:1-2 to the events of Acts 15 allows for us to account for all the evidence in the most natural way, and therefore remains the most historically likely version of the events.

For all intents and purposes, therefore, the events of Acts 1-18 all occurred within a twenty-two year period. We can marvel at how so much was accomplished in what is relatively a short amount of time. Let us take this information and use it to the profit of our understanding of the history of the early church.

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