The Oddity of the Reference to Jesus in Acts 4:13b

This essay argues that Luke’s strong association of Jesus with the manual-labor class in Acts 4:13b, and specifically with the disciples’ “illiteracy” and “unlearnedness,” is out of step with a sustained redactional strategy in his Gospel, whereby he consistently removed the Gospel of Mark’s associations of Jesus with the manual-labor class and offered an alternative image of Jesus as a scribal-literate teacher. This redactional strategy is particularly clear in Mark’s and Luke’s differing portrayals of Jesus as a synagogue teacher. Acts 4:13b may constitute a Lukan cameo of the Markan Jesus, but, regardless of this possibility, Acts 4:13b presents a moment of discontinuity between Luke’s Gospel and Acts that has been overlooked. The primary purpose of the article is to articulate the oddity of Luke’s interpretive choice in Acts 4:13b in light of his other images of Jesus and his portrayal of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. The essay closes with a possible solution: Luke has, in his Gospel, portrayed Jesus in imago Pauli.