The Acts of the Apostles is an unjustly under-read text of the New Testament. Its story is by now old news. From its humble beginnings within Judaism, Christianity survived its first decades and emerged as the most important world religion. Yet bypassing Acts because we know the ending misses out on the unfolding drama of the time. The first apostles struggled against the Jewish authorities and even quarreled among themselves, often with acrimony that modern Christians find unsettling. We should think of the earliest decades of Christianity as a white-hot crucible of conflict rather than a flower quietly unfolding and blooming. Putting this text in the hands of intermediate Latin students allows them to build on their years of study of a difficult language with a reading that is not only well within their grasp but is also of enduring importance.

This text includes summaries of each chapter of Acts, vocabulary lists, historical and contextual notes, informative notes and maps, a scholarly introduction to the context in which Acts was written, and multiple appendices.

Dale Grote earned his PhD in Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989. He is the author of many scholarly articles on Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as the widely used Comprehensive Guide to Wheelock’s Latin. His last book, The Vulgate of Mark with Synoptic Parallels, is the first in a projected series of Latin readers for intermediate students based on the New Testament. He is currently at work on the third in the series on the seven “authentic” letters of Paul. He is associate professor of Classics at UNC Charlotte.