The question of literary genre of Luke's second volume has been the focus of much debate. In this volume, Loveday Alexander examines the Acts texts by focusing on the ancient readers of the text. He argues that the diversity of the contemporary readers of the text provide rich and varied readings, as the divergent cultural and educational backgrounds of the readers reveal different perceptions of the text. He explores how Acts would have come across to the reader whose intellectual world was shaped by the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, by the Greek Bible, by Hellenistic biography, or the Greek novel, or political apologetic, and shows how these various readings offer insights into the text itself and also broadens our understanding of the pitfalls of communication in the ancient world and the strategies adopted by the first Christians writers to negotiate them.