The term challenges in the title of this essay has a number of possible references, some of which are very personal. I was in graduate school working diligently to understand the Acts of the Apostles in the context of rhetorical training and education in the larger Greco-Roman world when I encountered an essay by Fernando Segovia (1995a) in which he critiques the methods that were at the very core of what had, up to that point, been my introduction to biblical and early Christian studies. My reaction was twofold.