(ProQuest Information and Learning: Foreign characters omitted.) Paul outside the Walls: A Study of Luke's Socio-Geographical Universalism in Acts 14:8-20, by Dean P. Bechard. AnBib 143. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2000. Paper. Pp. 541. $40.00. In this revised Yale dissertation supervised by W. A. Meeks, Bechard undertakes a fresh, in-depth examination of Paul's first missionary journey in Acts, with special attention to the Lystra episode. His primary methods are (1) literary-critical, after the fashion of C. H. Talbert, appreciating the architectonic patterns and structures shaping the two-volume Lukan narrative, and (2) sociogeographical, following the more recent and innovative work of B. Breytenbach, focusing on Luke's appropriation of peculiar religious, cultural, and topographical features associated with southern Asia Minor/Anatolia. Exegetically, Bechard is most frequently in dialogue and disagreement with the stalwart German heritage of Actaforschung, especially that of M. Dibelius and E. Haenchen. Turning first to literary matters, Bechard demonstrates that the account of Paul and Barnabas's inaugural missionary expedition in Acts 13-14, far from being a loosely arranged, episodic chronicle, is in fact a carefully designed integrated narrative (pp. 124-25) systematically charting Paul's pioneering foray into Gentile territory among rulers (the proconsul at Cyprus), the people of Israel (the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch), and pagans (in the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe), directly fulfilling Christ's commission in 9:15. Further, far from being incidental prelude to the heart of Paul's mission in Acts 16-21 after the watershed Jerusalem conference, the report of the first journey provides a programmatic introduction to Paul's Spirit-ordained work (..., 13:2; 14:26) throughout Acts, an instructive precis of his [Luke's] narrative portrait of Paul's monumental witness to the nations (p. 165). The biggest part of the book features extensive investigation of ancient ethnographic and geographic materials, from both Jewish and Greco-Roman sources, which comprised Luke's conceptual map of the world (imago mundi) in general and of Lycaonia in particular. The purpose is not to assess the historical accuracy of Lukan geography by modern standards (a la W. M. Ramsay) but to trace the sociocultural contour of Luke's world as Luke conceived it. On the Jewish side, Bechard concentrates on the Table of Nations tradition in Gen 10 and various OT apocalyptic texts as the ideal configuration of the inhabited world from primordial times (Urzeit) to the climactic end of the age (Endzeit). This tradition persisted in Hellenistic-Jewish writings such as Jubilees, Josephus's Antiquities, and Luke-Acts. The Lukan adaptation is evident in (1) the sending of the seventy/seventy-two messengers in Luke 10, corresponding to the seventy/seventy-two nations of the world in Gen 10, as lambs into the midst of wolves (Luke 10:3; cf. I En. 89:14, 18-20, 59, which depicts Israel as twelve sheep surrounded by alien peoples in the guise of seventy wolves); (2) the catalogue of pilgrims from every nation under heaven in Acts 2:9-11, including representatives from each of the three main branches of Noah's family tree in Gen 10; and, most significantly, (3) the centripetal expansion of the early Christian mission from Israelites in Jerusalem to the descendants of Shem (the nation of Samaria, Acts 8:4-25), Ham (the Ethiopian eunuch, 8:26-39), and Japheth (the Greeks in Antioch, islanders in Cyprus, and settlers along the coastal and mountain regions of southeastern Anatolia in Acts 11-14, including the Lycaonians). As for Greco-Roman images of the world, Bechard targets historical and mythical representations of the particular area of Lycaonia (including the cities of Iconium, Derbe, and Lystra) along the northern slopes of the Taurus Mountains. Historically the ancient Lycaonians were renowned as a contentious, uncivilized people, stubbornly resistant to outside political and cultural influence and notorious for banditry and piracy from their isolated highland outposts. …