Acts 16:10 After Paul saw the vision, we attempted immediately to go over to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

16:11 We put out to sea from Troas and sailed a straight course to Samothrace, the next day to Neapolis, 16:12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of that district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. We stayed in this city for some days. 16:13 On the Sabbath day we went outside the city gate to the side of the river, where we thought there would be a place of prayer, and we sat down and began to speak to the women who had assembled there.

This is the first of the so-called “we” sections of Acts (characterized by the use of that pronoun).  They are: Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16.

What does the use of ‘we’ signify?

Dicken thinks that the ‘we’ sections do not necessarily reflect eyewitness testimony or require that Luke was the author.

Harper’s Bible Commentary is similarly non-committal, allowing that the change may be purely stylistic (see below).

One feature of these passages is that they begin and end abruptly.  Nowhere does the author write: “It this point I/we joined Paul.”

1. Merely a stylistic or rhetorical device?

 Joshua Schachterle asserts:

‘It is…likely that the “we” passages were added by the author to grant authenticity and credibility. This was a relatively common practice for 1st-century authors.’

But mere assertion does not count as evidence.

Mikael Parsons regards these passages as serving an important rhetorical purpose.  Consistent with ancient practice, Luke appealed to written sources (including, and especially, the OT), to speeched, and to eyewitness testimony (whether authentic or not).

Ehrman states the case (without necessarily committing himself to it) like this:

‘The author is simply using a well-known and common ancient writing device, in which an author begins talking in the first person in order to make his readers think that he was personally involved with the accounts he is narrating. This happens a lot in the New Testament itself, with the first person plural “we” – for example John 21:24; 2 Peter 1:16-19; 1 John 1:1-4; and it happens a lot outside the New Testament, for example in the Gospel of Peter, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, or the Apocryphon of John.’

Plümacher and Robbins have argued that the “we” is a Graeco-Roman literary device associated with sea narratives.  But, as Polhill observes,

‘the difficulty with this is that the “we” extends into the narrative far beyond the voyage (cf. Acts 16:17) and only occurs in three of the ten or twelve voyages in Acts.’

Porter and Witherington agree that no suitable parallel in the Greek literature of the time can be found.

Witherington further remarks that a hallmark of a Hellenistic historian was veracity.  It would have been against convention for an author to imply that he had been present at the time of the events recorded when, if fact, he had not.

Witherington argues that the author of Luke-Acts rarely intrudes himself into the narrative, and therefore that it is unlikely that he would do so simply for rhetorical effect.

Marshall agrees that this explanation has little in its favour.

2. A companion of Paul (not necessarily Luke or the author of Acts if other than Luke)

Porter thinks that the (anonymous) author, or a later redactor, drew upon sources that had been handed down to him (see Luke 1:1f).

Ehrman thinks that it is possible that:

‘the author was incorporating a travelogue into his account, a kind of itinerary kept by someone who joined Paul for a few of his journeys. We know the author of Luke-Acts was fond of using sources: in his Gospel, for example, he simply copied much of what he found in Mark and in Q.  It’s possible he did something similar in Acts: he had a source kept by someone who was with Paul a few times, and simply copied it into his account.  That’s why the “we-passages” begin and end so abruptly.’

C.K. Barrett thinks that there are too many discrepancies between the Paul of the Epistles and the Paul we meet in Acts.  In his opinion, then, the ‘we’ passages could not have been written by a close companion of Paul.  The passages in question, then would be non-Lukan sources, preserving the eye-witness experiences of another of Paul’s companions.  But the idea that Luke has included extracts from another’s journal without editing the verbs and pronouns seems intinsically unlikely.

Gundry:

‘“We sought” and “summoned us” imply that the author of Acts is a member of Paul’s party, probably (though not certainly) by having joined at this point.’

Haenchen thinks that inclusion of one of the two people just mentioned (Silas or Timothy) accounts for the change.  But Marshall judges it as most unlikely that a reader would make this assumption.

William Sanger Campbell notes that, previously, Barnabas has acted in the role of ‘vouching’ for Paul.  But he disappears from the scene in chapter 15, and the author of the ‘we’ passages takes on the role of Paul’s ‘authenticator’.

Dicken comments that if the author was a companion of Paul at the time, then it is unlikely that he would have named himself in the third person.  This excludes Silas, Timothy, Sopater, Aristarchus, Secundus, Gaius, Tychicus, and Trophimus.

Dicken adds that since Acts ends with a ‘we’ section, it is likely that the author was with Paul in Rome, and that he was one of the people named in the Prison Epistles.  This narrows down to Mark, Jesus Justus, Epaphras, Demas, Epaphroditus, and Luke.

It has been surmised that the ‘we’ passages have been inserted from an earlier source or travel diary from one of Paul’s companions.

‘Since the “we” sections seems consistent with the literary style of the rest of the narrative, it may seem surprising that the author would not just change the first-person in the source to the third-person when editing it, but perhaps the author retained the “we” to signal the use of an eyewitness source.’ (Source)

Witherington (following Praeder) notes how odd it would be if the author of Acts had included extracts from another person’s diary, yet failed to identify that person.  Why identify Silas and Timothy and others by name in the third person, and yet leave diary extracts from one of them in an anonymous form?

Further: Witherington says that the written style of the ‘we’ passages is consistent with that of the rest of Acts.

3. Luke, a companion of Paul and the author of Acts (as well as the Gospel bearing his name)

It is natural to assume that Luke, as author of the book, is including himself within this designation, and that he was therefore a companion of Paul on the occasions recounted.

As early as the 2nd century, this was the view of Irenaeus (although he goes too far in saying that these passage show that Luke was Paul’s ‘inseperable companion’).

‘If Luke is accepted as the companion of Paul, then the “we” passages of Acts disclose that Luke was in Philippi (possibly his hometown), and that there he joined Paul. (Ac 16:10-17 ) Then he later rejoined Paul when the latter returned to Philippi. (Ac 20:5-15 ) Luke then journeyed with Paul on his way to Jerusalem and stayed with Philip at Caesarea. (Ac 21:1-18 ) Then, after Paul’s two-year imprisonment in Caesarea, Luke sailed with him to Rome.’ (Ac 27:1-28:16 ). (WWCH)

In support of this, Irenaeus noted that according to 2 Timothy 4:11 only Luke remained with Paul when he was imprisoned in Rome.  Furthermore, Luke is not named in Acts, consistent with the book’s anonymity.

Witherington argues that the author’s reliance on the written and verbal testimony of others (Lk 1:1f) by no means excludes the possibility of counting himself as a secondary eyewitness.

Witherington:

‘The author does not wish to make a great deal of his own personal participation in these events, especially since he seems only to have been an observer and recorder of the actions and words of others, and so he quietly and subtly includes the “we” material, without fanfare, and thus without introduction.’

Witherington quotes Fitzmyer:

‘[I]f one takes the We-sections at face value—and does not overinterpret them, as Irenaeus did—one could still admit that Luke was a companion or fellow worker of Paul for a time, without having been with him inseparably.… Luke was not with Paul during the major part of his missionary activity, or during the period when Paul’s most important letters were being written.… Luke was not on the scene when Paul was facing the major crises in his evangelization of the eastern Mediterranean world, e.g. the Judaizing problem, the struggle with the factions in Corinth or the questions that arose in Thessalonica. Luke would not have been with Paul when he was formulating the essence of his theology or wrestling with the meaning of the gospel. This would explain why there is such a difference between the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the letters.… If one takes more seriously the indications furnished by the We-sections of Acts and admits that Luke did not write his two volumes until a decade or two after Paul’s house-arrest … is there not a reason to expect differences between Paul’s theology and Lucan “Paulinism”?’

This is the view of Harnack, Cadbury, Fitzmyer, Marshall and Polhill.

Conclusion

The most natural explanation for the ‘we’ passages in Acts is that they were written by Luke, a companion of Paul and the author of Acts (as well as the Gospel bearing his name) (Option 3).

Bibliography

In addition to the commentaries:

See this, by ‘The Amateur Exegete’.

See also this summary of options.

Frank E. Dicken (Lexham Bible Dictionary)