“God-Fearer” in Acts as a Topos

Where Religious Piety and Ethnic Otherness Meet

Abstract

In Acts, we find various categories of people including Jews and gentiles differentiated presumably according to religion or ethnicity. However, when we investigate the border between those categories, we notice that a border can at the same time be a point of connection. This paper will show that in Acts the term “God-Fearer” can be seen as a topos which is a border and also a tangent connecting Jews and gentiles where religious piety and ethnic otherness converged. In this study, we ask how the concept of fear of God/YHWH, originally a reference to the piety of the ancient Israelites, became the technical term which referred to gentile believers who were peripheral to Israel. In Acts, Luke seems to use this term as a rhetorical strategy in order to legitimate a new social entity including Jews and gentiles invalidating the previous ethnic differentiation.