Acts of the Apostles. Sacred book of the New Testament, which contains the History of the Church being born during the space of 29 or 30 years, from the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ until the year 63 of the Christian era. St. Luke is the author of this book, at the beginning of which he names himself; and he addresses it to Theophilus, to whom he had already addressed his Gospel. In it he reports the actions of the Apostles, almost always as an eyewitness: thus in the Greek text, this book is entitled {Greek}, Acts . One sees here the accomplishment of several promises by J. C. about his Ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the first preaching by the Apostles, and the miracles by which they were confirmed; an admirable portrait of the ways of the first Christians; finally, everything that happened in the Church until the dispersal of the Apostles, who split up to carry the Gospel to all the world. From the point of this separation, St Luke abandons the history of the other Apostles, from whom he was too distant, to attach himself particularly to that of St. Paul, who had chosen him as his Disciple and as companion in his labors. He follows this Apostle in all his missions, and even to Rome itself, where it appears that the Acts were published in the second year of St. Paul's stay there, that is to say, the 63rd year of the Christian Era, or the 9th and 10th of Nero's Empire. Overall the style of this book, which was composed in Greek, is more pure than that of the other Canonical writers; and one notices that St. Luke, who possessed much better Greek than Hebrew, always uses the latter in the version of the Septuagint in his quotation from Scripture. The Council of Laodicea put the Acts of the Apostles among the Canonic Books, and all Churches have always recognized it incontestably as such.

There was in Antiquity a great number of pseudo-works, most of them by heretics, under the name of Acts of the Apostles . The first book of this nature that appeared and which was entitled Acts of Paul and Thecle s, had as author a Priest and Disciple of St. Paul. This imposture was discovered by St. John; and although this Priest was brought to compose this work only by a false zeal for his Master, for this he was not degraded from the priesthood. These Acts were rejected as apocryphal by Pope Gelasius. Since then, the Manicheans claimed the Acts of St. Peter and St. Paul , in which they sowed their errors. One then saw the Acts of St. Andrew, of St. John, and of Apostles in general, claimed by the same heretics, according to St. Epiphanius, St. Augustine, and Philastrus; The Acts of the Apostles made by the Ebionites; The Voyage of St. Peter falsely attributed to St. Clément; the Taking or Kidnapping of St. Paul , composed by the Gasanites, and which the Gnostics also used; The Acts of St. Philip and St. Thomas , forged by the Encratites and the Apostolics; The Memory of the Apostles , composed by the Priscillianites; The Itinerary of the Apostles , which was rejected in the Council of Nicea, and various others that we will mention under the names of the sects that fabricated them: Act. Apostol . Hieronim. de Viris illustr. c. 7 . Chysostom. in Act . Dupin, Dissert. Prelim. on the N. T. Tertull. de Baptism Epiphan. heres. VIII. n°. 47. & 61 . S. Aug. de fide contr. Manich. and Tract. in Joann . Philastr. heres. 48 . Dupin Biblioth. des Aut. Eccles. des III. prem. siecles .