Tuesday, December 27, 2022

T. Francis Glasson on the Use of Joel in Acts 2:16-21

  

The quotation from Joel in Acts ii. 16-21 is sometimes put forward as a proof that the Second Advent was expected immediately. Concerning this quotation in Peter’s speech the following points may be noticed:

 

1. The Parousia of Christ is nowhere mentioned.

2. The quotation is given to show that the promises of God are now fulfilled; and the point of this passage is the reference to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Joe’s prophecy, it is claimed, is fulfilled in the events of Pentecost. ‘This is that’ (16). The Day of the Lord (20) is not the main point of the quotation which is given primarily because of its reference to the Spirit and to prophecy; it is extended beyond these limits, not with the idea of giving a ‘representation of great spiritual changes under physical imagery’, but rather in order to include the final words: ‘And it shall be,t that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (21, cf. Romans x. 13).

3. The O.T. quotations are the least reliable parts of Acts, as Rendel Harris has shown in his second book on the ‘Testimonies’. Many of the O.T. passages quotation as found in Testimony books which have come down to us, and though some may have been taken from Acts, Harris thinks that others were in the collection of Testimonies first and that Luke took them from this source. It is doubtful if such an early state Peter would have quoted Psalm lxiv. 26 and cix. 8 as applying to Judas (Acts i. 20). Again, a testimony from Amos is placed upon the lips of James in xv, but the point of the quotation only occurs in the LXX, which he surely did not use on this occasion: the Hebrew has Edom, not ‘adam. This quotation is apparently due to the writer, and the same may apply to other O.T. references in his pages. (T. Francis Glasson, The Second Advent: The Origin of the New Testament Doctrine [3d ed.; London: The Epworth Press, 1963], 156-57)