‘I Must Also See Rome’ (Acts 19:21): Eyewitness Discourse in Luke and Acts

This article discusses eyewitnessing as a literary motif in Luke and Acts. Both
writings position themselves within a scientific-historiographical tradition
which conceives of eyewitness testimony as the most reliable source of
knowledge. Hence, both Luke and Acts bolster the trustworthiness of their
contents by presenting it as going back to eyewitness testimonies by e.g.
the shepherds in Luke 2 and the women and disciples in Luke 24. Aside from
this inclusio of eyewitnesses, the repeated expression ‘what we/you/they
have seen and heard’ embodies the centrality of eyewitnessing in Luke’s and
Acts’s accounts. The second section of the article connects the development
of an eyewitness perspective in Acts with notions of space and memory. In
that section I argue that the combination of spatial description and autopsy
language in Acts serves to create literary memories of David’s tomb, the
Areopagus, and the city of Rome.