THE WRITER

The opening words of Acts refer to the Gospel of Luke as “the first account.” And since both accounts are addressed to the same individual, Theophilus, we know that Luke, though not signing his name, was the writer of Acts. (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1) Both accounts have a similar style and wording. The Muratorian Fragment of about 170 C.E. also attributes the writership to Luke. Other ecclesiastical writings of the second century C.E. by Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian of Carthage, when quoting from Acts, cite Luke as the writer.

WHEN AND WHERE WRITTEN

The book covers a period of approximately twenty-eight years, from Jesus’ ascension in 33 C.E. to the end of the second year of Paul’s imprisonment in Rome about 61 C.E. During this period four Roman emperors ruled in succession: Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Since it relates events down to the year 61 it could not have been completed earlier. Had the account been written later than 61, it is reasonable to expect that Luke would have provided more information about Paul; if written after the year 64, mention surely would have been made of Nero’s violent persecution that began then; and if written after 70 C.E., as some contend, we would expect to find Jerusalem’s destruction recorded. The writer Luke accompanied Paul much of the time during his travels, including the perilous voyage to Rome, which is apparent from his use of the first-person plural pronouns “we,” “our,” and “us” in Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-37; 28:1-16. Paul, in his letters written from Rome, mentions that Luke was also there. (Col. 4:14; Philem. 24) It was, therefore, in Rome that the book of Acts was written.

As already observed, Luke himself was an eyewitness to much of what he wrote, and in his travels he contacted fellow Christians who either participated in or observed certain events described. For example John Mark could tell him of Peter’s miraculous prison release (Acts 12:12), while the events described in chapters six through eight could have been learned from the missionary Philip. And Paul, of course, as an eyewitness, was able to supply many details of events that happened when Luke was not with him.

AUTHENTICITY

The accuracy of the book of Acts has been verified over the years by a number of archaeological discoveries. For example, Acts 13:7 says that Sergius Paulus was the proconsul of Cyprus. Now it is known that shortly before Paul visited Cyprus it was ruled by a propraetor or legatus, but the discovery of Cyprian coins proves that when Paul was there the island was under the direct rule of the Roman Senate in the person of a provincial governor called a proconsul. Moreover, an inscription found at Soli on the northern coast of Cyprus dated “in the proconsulship of Paulus” testifies to Luke’s exactness and accuracy. Similarly in Greece, during the rule of Augustus Caesar, Achaia was a province under the direct rule of the Roman Senate, but when Tiberius was emperor it was ruled directly by him. Later, under Emperor Claudius, it again became a senatorial province, according to Tacitus. A fragment of a rescript from Claudius to the Delphians of Greece has been discovered, which says “in Gallio’s proconsulship . . . Claudius being Imperator for the 26th time.” Therefore, Acts 18:12 is correct in speaking of Gallio as the “proconsul” when Paul was there in Corinth the capital of Achaia. Also, an inscription on an archway in Thessalonica shows that Acts 17:8 is correct in speaking of the “city rulers” (“politarchs,” governors of the citizens), even though this title is not found in classical literature.

To this day in Athens the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, where Paul preached, stands as a silent witness to the truthfulness of Acts. (Acts 17:19) Medical terms and expressions found in Acts are in agreement with the Greek medical writers of that time. Modes of travel used in the Near East in the first century were essentially as described in Acts: overland, by walking, horseback or horse-drawn chariots (23:24, 31, 32; 8:27-38); overseas, by cargo ships. (21:1-3; 27:1-5) Those ancient vessels did not have a single rudder but were controlled by two large oars, hence accurately spoken of in the plural number. (27:40) The description of Paul’s voyage by ship to Rome (27:1-44) as to the time taken, the distance traveled and the places visited is acknowledged by modern seamen familiar with the region as completely reliable and trustworthy.

Acts of Apostles was accepted without question as inspired Scripture and canonical by Scripture cataloguers from the second through the fourth centuries C.E. Portions of the book, along with fragments of the four Gospels, are found in the Chester Beatty No. 1 papyrus manuscript (P⁴⁵) of the early third century C.E. The Michigan No. 1571 manuscript of the third or fourth century contains portions of chapters 18 and 19, and a fourth-century manuscript, Aegyptus No. 8683, contains parts of chapters 4 through 6. The book of Acts was quoted from by Polycarp of Smyrna about 115 C.E., by Ignatius of Antioch about 110 C.E., and by Clement of Rome perhaps as early as 95 C.E. Athanasius, Jerome and Augustine of the fourth century all confirm the earlier listings that included Acts.

See the book “All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial.”

ADADAH

(A·daʹdah) [festival, or bordering].

One of the cities in the southern part of the territory originally assigned to Judah, lying toward the border of Edom.—Josh. 15:22.

ADAH

(Aʹdah) [ornament].

1. The first of Lamech’s two living wives. She was the mother of Jabal and Jubal, the founders of nomadic herdsmen and musicians respectively.—Gen. 4:19-23.

2. A Canaanite daughter of Elon the Hittite, and one of Esau’s wives. As such she was “a source of bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah.” Her son’s name was Eliphaz, the father of Amalek. She may be the one called Basemath in Genesis 26:34.—Gen. 26:35; 36:2, 4, 10, 12.

ADAIAH

(A·daiʹah) [Jehovah has adorned himself].

1. A descendant of Levi’s son Gershom and an ancestor of Asaph.—1 Chron. 6:39-43.

2. A Benjaminite, son of Shimei.—1 Chron. 8:1, 21.

3. The father of Maaseiah, who was one of “the chiefs of hundreds” that helped Jehoiada the priest overthrow wicked Athaliah’s rule and set Jehoash upon the throne of Judah.—2 Chron. 23:1.

4. The father of Jedidah, who was the mother of King Josiah. (2 Ki. 22:1) He was a native of Bozkath, located in the Shephelah in the territory of Judah due W of Hebron.—Josh. 15:21, 33, 39.

5. A son of Joiarib of the tribe of Judah.—Neh. 11:4, 5.

6. A priest dwelling in Jerusalem after the return from Babylonian exile, the son of Jeroham.—1 Chron 9:10-12; Neh. 11:12.

7. An Israelite, one of the sons of Bani who divorced their foreign wives and sent away their sons after the Babylonian exile.—Ezra 10:29, 44.

8. Another of the Israelites who sent away their foreign wives and sons, his father being Binnui.—Ezra 10:38, 39, 44.

ADALIA

(A·daʹli·a) [perhaps of Persian origin, honorable].

One of Haman’s ten sons.—Esther 9:7-10; see HAMAN.

ADAM

(Adʹam) [earthling man, mankind; from a root meaning “red” or “ruddy”].

The Hebrew word occurs as “man,” “mankind” or “earthling man” some 560 times in the Scriptures, and is applied to individuals and mankind in general, It is also used as a proper name.

1. God said: “Let us make man in our image.” (Gen. 1:26) What a historic pronouncement! And what a singular position in history “Adam, the son of God,” holds—the first human creature! (Luke 3:38) Adam was the crowning glory of Jehovah’s earthly creative works, not only because of the timing near the close of six creative epochs, but, more importantly, because “in God’s image he created him.” (Gen. 1:27) This is why the perfect man Adam, and his degenerate offspring to a much lesser degree, possessed mental powers and abilities far superior to all other earthly creatures.

Made in the likeness of his Grand Creator, Adam had the divine attributes of love, wisdom, justice and power; hence he possessed a sense of morality involving a conscience, something altogether new in the sphere of earthly life. In the image of God, Adam was to be a global administrator and have in subjection the sea and land creatures and the fowl of the air. It was, therefore, not necessary for Adam to be a spirit creature, in whole or in part, to possess Godlike qualities. Jehovah formed man out of the dust particles of the ground, put in him the force of life so that he became a living soul and gave him the ability to reflect the image and likeness of his Creator. “The first man is out of the earth and made of dust.” “The first man Adam became a living soul.” (Gen. 2:7; 1 Cor. 15:45, 47) That was in the year 4026 B.C.E. It was likely in the fall of the year, for mankind’s most ancient calendars began counting time in the autumn around October 1, or at the first new moon of the lunar civil year.—See YEAR.

Adam’s home was a very special paradise, a veritable garden of perfection and pleasure called Eden (see EDEN No. 1), providing him with all the necessary physical things of life, for “every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food” for his perpetual sustenance was there. (Gen. 2:9) All about Adam were peaceful animals of every kind and description. But Adam was alone. There was no other creature ‘according to his kind’ with which to talk. Jehovah recognized that “it is not good for the man to continue by himself.” So by divine surgery, the first and only case of its kind, Jehovah took a rib from Adam and fashioned it into a female counterpart to be his wife and the mother of his children. Overjoyed with such a beautiful helper and constant companion, Adam burst forth in the first recorded poetry, “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and she was called woman “because from man this one was taken.” Later Adam called his wife Eve. (Gen. 2:18-23; 3:20) The truthfulness of this account is attested to by Jesus and the apostles. (Matt. 19:4-6; Mark 10:6-9; Eph. 5:31; 1 Tim. 2:13) Furthermore, Jehovah blessed these newlyweds with plenty of enjoyable work. They were not cursed with idleness. They were to keep busy and active dressing and taking care of their garden home, and as they multiplied and filled the earth with billions of their kind, they were to expand this paradise to earth’s limits. This was a divine mandate.—Gen. 1:28.

“God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) Indeed, from the very beginning Adam was perfect in every respect. He was equipped with the power of speech and with a highly developed vocabulary. He was able to give meaningful names to the living creatures all about him. He was capable of carrying on a two-way conversation with his God and his wife.

For all these reasons and many more, Adam was under obligation to love, worship and strictly obey his Grand Creator. More than that, the Universal Lawgiver spelled out for him the simple law of obedience and fully informed him of the just and reasonable penalty for disobedience: “As for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:16, 17; 3:2, 3) Notwithstanding this explicit law carrying severe penalty for disobedience, he did disobey.

RESULTS OF SIN

Eve was thoroughly deceived by Satan the Devil, but not so her husband. “Adam was not deceived,” says the apostle Paul. (1 Tim. 2:14) With full knowledge Adam willfully and deliberately chose to disobey and then as a criminal he tried to hide. When brought to trial, instead of showing sorrow or regret or asking for forgiveness, Adam attempted to justify himself and pass the responsibility off on others, even blaming Jehovah for his willful sin. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and so I ate it.” (Gen. 3:7-12) So out of Eden Adam was cast, into an unsubdued earth that was cursed to produce thorns and thistles, there to sweat out an existence harvesting the bitter fruits of his sin. Outside the garden, awaiting execution, Adam fathered sons and daughters, the names of only three being preserved—Cain, Abel and Seth. To all of Adam’s children he passed on hereditary sin and death, since he himself was sinful.—Gen. 3:23; 4:1, 2, 25.

This was the tragic start Adam gave the human race. Paradise, happiness and everlasting life were forfeited, and in their place sin, suffering and death were acquired through disobedience. “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned.” “Death ruled as king from Adam down.” (Rom. 5:12, 14) But Jehovah in his wisdom and love provided a “second man,” the “last Adam,” who is the Lord Jesus Christ. By means of this obedient “Son of God” the way was opened up whereby descendants of the disobedient “first man Adam” could regain Paradise and everlasting life, the church or congregation of Christ even gaining heavenly life. “For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.”—John 3:16, 18; Rom. 6:23; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45, 47.

After sinner Adam’s expulsion from Eden he lived to see murder, murder of his own son, banishment of his killer-son, abuse of the marriage arrangement and profanation of Jehovah’s sacred name. He witnessed the building of a city, the development of musical instruments, and the forging of tools out of iron and copper. He watched and was condemned by the example of Enoch, “the seventh man in line from Adam,” one who “kept walking with the true God.” He even lived to see Noah’s father Lamech of the ninth generation. Finally, after 930 years, all but a very little of which was spent in the slow process of dying, Adam returned to the ground from which he was taken, in the year 3096 B.C.E., just as Jehovah had said.—Gen. 4:8-26; 5:5-24; Jude 14.

2. A city mentioned at Joshua 3:16 as being at the side of Zarethan. It is generally identified with Tell ed-Damieh, a site on the E bank of the Jordan River just below the mouth of the torrent valley of Jabbok, about eighteen miles (29 kilometers) N of Jericho. The name of the city may be derived from the color of the alluvial clay, which is abundant in that region.—1 Ki. 7:46.

The Bible record indicates that the damming up of the river Jordan’s waters at the time of Israel’s crossing the river took place at Adam. The Jordan valley narrows considerably, beginning at the site of Tell ed-Damieh northward, and history records that in the year 1267 a blockage of the river occurred at this very point due to the falling of a lofty mound across the river, stopping the flow of water for some sixteen hours. In modern times, earth tremors in the summer of 1927 again caused landslides that dammed up the Jordan so that the flow of water was cut off for twenty-one and a half hours. (See The Foundations of Bible History—Joshua-Judges, by John Garstang, pp. 136, 137.) If this was the means God saw fit to employ, then such a damming of the river in the days of Joshua was miraculously timed and effected so as