On the Lost second book of Acts

 The Lost Second Book of the Acts of the Apostles 

Surely luke planned at least one more book in his series. 

          He ends by leaving Paul in Rome he says for two years. Luke evidently knows what happens after two years, but he does not tell us.

          It is against narrative logic to describe one set of characters and events and halfway througgh introduce another character and follow the second character without mentioning something that happened to the first bunch, but Luke does exactly this, he drops Peter halfway through and follows Paul.  Evidently he has composed a usual length of a handy scroll and finds a nice transition to take up the dropped characters in the next volume.

          And most of all reasons to show Luke meant to write at least a second book of Acts, our Acts of the Apostles  ends exactly when the most interesting decade in the histiry of the church, from the murder of Jesus's brother in 62 to Masada in 72, begins.

2Acts would begin with the murder of James in Jerusalem probably similar to the report of Josephus.

I am pretty sure Peter at this time is in Iraq with Mark who Paul has no use for, and Silas who travelled with Paul until Paul was arrested. I doubt Peter's letter is mentioned in 2Acts, but 1Peter hints of the researgence of partisanship in northan Turkey.  I think he went there and maybe realized he had to have a face to face with Paul.

     Some modern scholars do not think Peter could write 1Peter. They think a Galilllean fisherman can not read, and that Babylon was noy code for Rome during Simon Peter's lifetime, but this Babylon is probably the Jewish communities along the Euphrates from where the Babylonian Talmud would come 500 years later, and in 62 Peter had been 32 years head of a cult that puts its finger on ancient prophesies and says this speaks of my friend. leaving aside whether Galilllean fishermen could read, this one most probably could.

     Peter and crew found their way to Rome in time for the fire and Nero blamed the fire on the christians and made a spectacle, as was his style, of crucifying them in a line along the Appian way and down into his gardens, similar on a small scale to the spectacle a century before after the rebelion of Sparticus.

     Luke has not mentioned any of Paul's letters nor James', nor Peter's, but i think he would include a tale of the survival of Mark's gospel notes and draft because not only did he use it,  like those who made gMt, but also it would emphasize gLk was as legitimately Markan as gMt. Some scholars think because Luke does not seem to be a very deep reader of Paul's letters, the author is probably not his friend, but i think the opposite. Paul is his hero. At this point, if Luke writes in the 80s and early 90s, church members are reading these letters and are soon to be de facto canonized, Luke has the syndrome i was there man, sort of like no man is a prophet among his own. I think it more likely he was his friend.

     So, Jesus's brother, Paul, and Peter are now suddenly dead. The principals of past dispute become sainted and of the synoptic inner three of the twelve apostles only John is left. Perhaps 2Acts will narrate the Markan material coming to John, as a signal that he is the new core. What i call the Petership of John has begun and lasts for 30 years.

     Then, in 66 the jewish kingdoms revolt, Vespatian is sent, captures Josephus, Nero is killed, Vespatian becomes Caesar, the temple is destroyed  in 70 and in the mountains of the desert the Romans seige the last holdouts.  

     So, the three reasons to believe in 2Acts are "two years", he should get back to the other characters, and he stops right before a historic and dramatic decade in which the church is decapitated again and the temple greater than Solomons  was destroyed. 

          So much for the Dramatic Decade, afterwards Vespatian was Caesar until 79, poor Titus, his son was Caesar for 3 unfortunate years around yr 80, and Domition, Vespatian's other son was Caesar for 18 years.  Until the 14th year of Domition these were quiet years for the christians. The Jewish persecutions were over and the attitudes toward things Jewish probably made it easier to make Christian converts. I think Luke may have meant to include the bad fortunes of Titus in his series because he includes Beatrice, the wife Titus could not have, to listen to Paul before Paul appeals to the Emperor and is sent off to Rome.

Why though, do we not have 2Acts? 

     I have only guesses. 2Acts would have run over some of the same history Josephus dealt with in the 70s when he wrote his book on the Jewish War, and again in the late 80s and 90s when he is writing his Annals .

     Some Scholars have doubted the persecution of domitian, and it does look like it was not lethal, but they did exile the head of the church to Patmos island.

     My interpretation of second and third John, and of Jude, and my main theory for the absence of second Acts blames this persecution of domitian. For the John material I plan to do a essay on the Peter ship and writings of John and for Jude I plan to write an essay on the Peter ship of Jude.

     It is a common belief among many theories that Luke wrote in the late 80s and 90s. That goes well with my Theory. The sudden disruption in flight of the core of the cult would put off the publication of second Acts, but after the trouble all boiled over we have the further question of why I wasn't published then. But as we shall see in the essay on the Peter ship of Jude, the epistle literature, not originally meant to be Bible, is making great strides toward canonization. If Luke and The Acts of the Apostles became Canon in the relatively short time between Whitney it's already struck and when it was okay to come out of the cold, Not only would be Epistles be read differently from how they were written, read more as harmonic communication between Saints, Acts also would be seeing as complete.