| Abstract
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Acts 4:23-31, a carefully constructed community prayer placed at the center of Luke-Acts, plays a pivotal role in Luke's narrative, unifying various elements from Luke's Gospel with elements from Acts. The prayer, which is a response to the Sanhedrin's threats against the proclamation of the gospel, looks backward to the passion of Jesus in Luke, comparing the community's plight with that of Jesus. The prayer, which asks for boldness from God in the face of threats, also looks forward to the community's goal in Acts: proclaiming the gospel to the end of the earth. These connections, however, are not seamless. There are three major tensions between Acts 4:23-31 and Luke-Acts. There is a tension between (1) the different ways God is addressed; (2) the different accounts of Herod's and Pilate's responsibility for Jesus' death; and (3 the different accounts of Roman and Gentile treatment of Jesus and his community. In order to understand these tensions, this study takes three steps. First, this study reconstructs the first-century setting of Luke-Acts. By reconstructing this setting, conclusions are made about where and how Luke's narrative was heard. Second, this study then moves specifically to the prayer in Acts 4:23-31 and analyzes it against the backdrop of first-century Jewish prayer. By analyzing the prayer against this backdrop, conclusions are made about how the prayer was heard. In particular, special attention is paid to the prayer's themes, syntactic structure, idiom, and narrative structure. Third, building on the conclusions from the first two steps, this study then analyzes the narrative patterns in Luke-Acts and highlights the role Acts 4:23-31 plays in developing these patterns. By discerning the role of Acts 4:23-31 in Luke-Acts, this study concludes that the tensions between Acts 4:23-31 and Luke-Acts do not hinder the audience from understanding the unity of Luke's narrative. Instead, the tensions help the audience comprehend an important Lucan theme: universality. The tensions help the audience realize the universal mission of the gospel as well as the universal opposition to the gospel.
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