Sunday is a day to relax, honor God, focus on renewal and rest. So in this "a chapter a day" study, we pause to look at summaries and overviews of past reading or future readings.
One natural question facing a reader of the book of Acts is, "When did this all take place?" and, as a follow-up, how close are some of the events? Although Luke's writing places one event after another, in some places there is clear evidence that years pass between events. In some places Luke himself provides the evidence, using phrases like, "they stayed there for some time."
Historians date the crucifixion to about 31 CE, give or take a couple of years. (Some of this is based on historical events described in Luke's gospel.) The book of Acts then covers at least another 30 years, past 60 CE. In the book of Acts we have a number of historical events (such as the death of Herod Agrippa in chapter 12) which have an external date (about 44 CE.) In addition, in other letters, notably Paul's letter to the Galatians, we have some guide to the timeline; Paul describes his travels and in two places, Galatians 1:18 and Galatians 2:1, gives a length of time between events.
With these as a guide, there have been numerous attempts to date the events in the book of Acts, as they spread across thirty years. Here is one timeline at biblehub.com. And here is a more detailed timeline, attempting to date some external events in the Roman empire and also date some of Paul's letters. A similar timeline is here at morethancake.org.
One more link -- in the spirit of xkcd.com, we have the story and structure of Acts.
Tomorrow we will move on to Acts 6, looking at the first serious dispute (racism/ethnicism!) in the early church.
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