Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Six)

Parts 1-5 of this essay can be accessed from the archive on the right of the screen under September 2009.

As Saul and Barnabas returned to Judea with the love offering from the church at Antioch, Herod Antipas began seizing members of the sect for imprisonment and eventual execution. It is worth noting that the last few times we’ve seen Peter, it’s been back in Galilee. While he has escaped the persecution of the temple in Judea, that places him directly back in Antipas’ kingdom and, in some ways, subject to more danger than the temple might present as they had to work in concert with Roman authority. After executing James, Antipas was soundly praised by the non-converted Jews and, in response, he had Peter arrested as well. Luke is uncharacteristically vague about the exact timeline here. By placing Peter's arrest directly after the story about Saul and Barnabas bringing the money to Judea, his implication seems to be that the events with Peter unfolded well after their arrival. He ambiguously opens that section though, writing that, “it was about this same time” [12:1] that Herod began his arrests. Is it possible that Agabus’s prophesy that brought them running with money collected from the Antioch church was a veiled plea for money to help James and, perhaps, Peter himself?

According the Luke’s account, of course, it turns out that Peter didn’t need any help escaping from prison. Despite the heavy guard placed to watch Peter (who already had a reputation for miraculous escapes from jail), he is nonetheless visited on the day before his trial (and likely execution) by an angel of the Lord who helps him make his escape.

The purpose of our analyzing the Acts of the Apostles is not to go through and disprove every miracle as inauthentic. It is possible (and, indeed, many believe) that the facts it lays out are, by their very nature, beyond reproach and accept each miracle in turn as indisputable facts by virtue of their inclusion in the New Testament. However, the two passages that follow Peter’s escape from prison do suggest some interesting sub-textual readings worth at least investigating even while recognizing them as essentially speculation.

After Peter escaped from prison, Luke writes that:

He went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!” “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.” But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, there were astonished. Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the brothers about this,” he said, and then he left for another place. [12:12-17]

One can’t help but notice the paralls between this story about Peter and those surrounding Christ’s own, post-resurrection. Both are identified as being alive by a woman, who rushes to tell others who, in turn, do not believe her story. Notice also the ambiguity with which Luke glosses over where exactly Peter fled to or in whose company he might have traveled after his appearance among the disciples. More ominously, Peter is only mentioned once again in the Acts of the Apostles. Traditional church doctrine adheres to the idea that Peter eventually traveled with Paul to found the Roman church and was later executed by Nero, like Paul, for his crimes against the state. Though there is little means by which to prove this didn’t happen, the event itself, like Paul’s death is not contained within the Acts of the Apostles.

Yet, there is an event directly juxtaposed against Peter’s escape from prison about which we can know something. Herod, in some kind of political dispute with the people of Tyre and Sidon, called a diplomatic summit to resolve these differences. Upon addressing “the people” (though not clear whether Luke is referring to the people summoned to his court or just, you know, the people), someone in the crowd shouted that Herod spoke with the voice of God. Because he did not refute the man’s claim (and thus show deference to God), Herod was stricken down by the Lord for his lack of humility and “was eaten by worms and died” [9:23].

The problem is, history is pretty clear about the eventual fate of Herod Antipas and it was not death-by-angel-smiting. Instead, he was eventually found guilty of treason by Caligula and, around 39 CE, was stripped of his authority, his money, and exiled to Gaul where he died a few years later. One could make the argument that this fate might be the metaphoric equivalent of “an angel of the Lord struck him down” but then that indulgence just leads us back to questioning whether these inclusions of the “angel of the Lord” into various jailbreaks and auditory visions might not also be allegorical rather than objective in their inclusion into the story. Luke also finishes up the chapter after discussing Herod’s fate by recording that “When Barnabus and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark” [12:25], suggesting again that Herod’s death had already occurred before they left though his death actually occurred some years later and well-outside of the radar of history. The historical accountability of Herod’s removal does give us a framework to state with some certainty that the events described up to this point probably occurred within six years or so of Jesus’s crucifixion.

All but one section of the remaining fifteen chapters of Acts deals with Saul’s missions to recruit believers to the newly-dubbed Christian religion. It is valuable to note that, at this point in Saul’s ministry, his role is, in some ways, subordinate to that of Barnabas. Barnabas, unlike Saul, was from the original Twelve Witnesses and was one of the direct recipients of the tongue of fire via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and, by older Church protocols, one of the few authorized to oversee the two-fold initiation process of baptism and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Strangely, though, this formula is evoked with decreasing frequency once the narrative of the ministry leaves Judea.

The evangelizing duo made their first post-Antioch ministry in Cyprus, the island upon which Barnabas was born, where they had to get past another Jewish sorcerer named Elymas. In the description of this passage, we are treated to the first usage of the name by which Saul of Tarsus would eventually be best known, Paul, and given some insights into the nature of Paul and Barnabas’s partnership.

The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun.” Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord. [13:8-12]

Notice that Barnabas is listed first in their partnership but it is Saul who takes things to the next level and directly calls out Elymas. Elymas’s punishment also mirrors Paul’s own experience on the road to Damascus and is one of only a few examples in the New Testament of God causing blindness, rather than healing it.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Five)

The first four parts of this essay can be accessed from the archive on the right side of the screen under September of 2009.

Up to the conversion of Saul, the ministry of the early church was, in many ways, an extension of Jesus’s own ministry as they continued to baptize, heal, and teach among the Jews to fill a populist vacuum created by the temple’s complicity with Roman authority. Taking the Gospels and the Acts at face value, the church had taken on essentially three innovations since Jesus’s ascension; performing their miracles and teaching in Jesus’s name, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit with the spiritual gifts that came with it, and the creation of a community that lived, worked, and, perhaps, dwelt apart from the Jewish society as a whole. With Saul’s conversion and acceptance into the fold, the very nature of the ministry changed though Luke places the initiative for that alteration in the hands of the leader of the early church, Simon who is called Peter.

After raising Tabitha from the dead, Peter remained in Joppa, a city not far from Lydda where he performed the miracle and, from all indicators, began seeding a new church there. Meanwhile, in Caesarea, a man named Cornelius had a peculiar vision that the voice of God was commanding him to seek out Peter in Joppa. Luke includes some interesting details about Cornelius that makes the passage worth investigating.

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. [10:1,2].

Three important details about Cornelius jump out immediately. First, he is given a name, unlike the anonymous centurion who impressed Jesus with his faith from Matthew’s gospel. Second, he is not only a centurion from the Italian regiment, meaning that, in all likelihood, he was actually Roman and not just a member of the Roman army. Finally, he is described as being “god-fearing” (a term that shows up with increasing regularity as the New Testament proceeds along), meaning that though he was not Jewish, he exhibited great sensitivity to and even longing for the uniquely personal relationship that the Jewish God promised above and beyond the impersonal worship of the “pagan” gods. These facts are important not because they may or may not be factual, but because this is what Luke wants us to know about the man who would set a remarkable precedent within the early church. These qualities, in a sense, are also his qualifications.

After receiving his command from above, Cornelius sends to of his men to Joppa to fetch Peter. Peter, as it turned out was having a vision of his own. Praying on the roof of a believer’s house while he waited for a meal to be prepared, Peter had one of the most detailed visions contained within the Acts of the Apostles—a vision concerning the future of the church.

He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. [10:11-16]

It is important to note that neither God nor Jesus are explicitly identified as the source of this vision. In fact, unlike Jesus’s words to Paul in the auditory vision that led to his conversion, these words are not given the red-ink treatment, indicating words of the divine. As the soldiers arrived at the house asking for him, Peter heard the voice again, this time identified by Luke as “The Spirit” [10:19], urging him to go with the men for they were sent, at least indirectly, by the source of his vision. When Peter arrived at Cornelius’s house, he found not only an open-minded centurion but “his relatives and close-friends” [10:24] who were, no doubt, also mostly not Jewish. The Jewish faith, of which Peter was certainly once considered a lawful and observant member, did not allow for him to meet with, let alone eat with, non-Jews. Nonetheless, Peter said:

“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean…I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” [10:28,34,35]

With this one rhetorical flourish, Luke would have us believe, Peter, as directed by the Holy Spirit, changed the course of not only the early church but of human history. Peter told those in the house that God had given to the people Israel a message of “the good news of peace through Jesus Christ” [10:35]. He offered a short timeline of Jesus’s ministry on Earth, including specifically that his ministry began in Galilee, spread throughout Judea, and followed that of John the Baptist. He suggests that God had “anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit” and that Jesus had used that power to “do good and healing…because God was with him” [10:38]. He asserted that “we are witnesses of everything he did” (meaning, the Twelve are the witnesses) but leaves the identity of Jesus’s murderers conspicuously vague, saying only that “they killed him by hanging him on a tree” [10:39].

As Peter delivered this first sermon to the Gentiles, a most surprising thing happened:

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. [10:44-48]

Now, there is no disputing the idea that (before Saul) only the Twelve had the power to facilitate the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, there are two interpretations that might be taken away from this passage. Either Peter, through his somewhat privileged connection to God, was able to extend this blessing upon them by virtue of his own will or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within these Gentiles was a completely unexpected side-effect of their being exposed to the “good news,” the literal translation of the word, gospel. Again, as with the conversion of Saul, baptism occurs only after the spontaneous indwelling of the Holy Spirit and almost as an act of decorum rather than necessity. Of course, this innovation to the ministry was the cause of great concern to the “circumcised believers” and Peter was compelled to return to Jerusalem to recount the story of what had happened and, no doubt, defend his own involvement in something that was clearly not Jewish and clearly not in observance of the Law. What was remarkable and clearly new about what he had done was that he had not converted Gentiles to Judaism. He had converted them to something quite different and this may have been the moment (though Luke explicitly places it elsewhere) that the church stopped thinking of themselves as a sect of Judaism and started thinking of themselves as Christians.

This notion is reinforced in the following section which again shifts our attention away from Peter and the Judean church and outwards into areas occupied by a great many peoples from many different backgrounds and worldviews. Luke writes that those who had been forced out of Jerusalem by the backlash from Stephen’s ministry had spread into many different lands including Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch but is careful to note that they shared the good news “only with Jews” [11:19]. Some of those converted, however, began preaching the message to Greeks living in Antioch and from among these “god-fearing” pagans, a new church began to emerge. Note that Luke never suggests that, because of what Peter did, disciples were authorized to make this transition. Instead, it is presented as almost an inevitable outgrowth of the ministry as it spread among believers separated by great distances.

When news of the somewhat unorthodox church that had developed at Antioch got back to the Twelve in Jerusalem, they sent Barnabas to investigate the validity of their faith. Heartened, we may assume, by this strange outcropping of predominantly non-Jewish believers, Barnabas went looking for the one man with a similarly unconventional conversion who might help forge a bridge between these two cultures—none other than Saul of Tarsus.

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. [11:25,26].

One wonders what exactly Saul was doing in Tarsus when Barnabas arrived to bring him into the ministry. No mention is made of a fledgling church at Tarsus so it is tempting to assume that Saul had merely spent the time wondering what the purpose of his conversion was if his fate, for the moment, was to sit hundreds of miles away from where his new-found faith might matter. Now, with Barnabas to mentor him in the orthodoxy of the Jerusalem sect, Saul was finally able to channel some of that unspent energy into teaching new believers. In the curious mixture of Jews and Gentiles converted to believers by the “good news,” guided in the tradition by Barnabus and steered into uncharted waters by Saul, something truly new emerged.

Chapter eleven closes with yet another curious addendum (Luke loves those), reporting that:

During this time prophets some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help to the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. [11:27-29]

While a community of believers spread all over the world could not live communally as Peter and the others had done immediately after Jesus’s ascension, an early precedent was set that enrollment in the church still carried certain monetary obligations. We may accept the gift of the Antioch church as the goodwill gesture described by Luke without dismissing the pragmatic subtext that this generous gift, delivered by Barnabas (Saul’s original sponsor) and Saul to the elders in Jerusalem probably went a long way towards legitimizing Saul’s usefulness if not authority within that body.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Four)

The earlier portions of this essay can be accessed from the archive on the right side of the screen under September of 2009.

[This essay will reference the New International Version until otherwise noted. Seriously, my cat ate my homework.]

As Saul languished, a disciple in Damascus named Ananias had a vision in which the Lord told him to seek out Saul in order to lay hands on him and heal his blindness. Ananias, already knowing Saul’s reputation as a persecutor, overcame his fear of the Lord long enough to make sure they were talking about the same Saul before being assured that “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles” [9:15]. Thus reassured, Ananias went and “placing his hands on Saul” told him that, “the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit” [9:17]. His sight was immediately restored and, we are told, Saul rose and was baptized before finally partaking of food and drink again.

Before analyzing that section, let’s skip back to the twenty-second chapter again where Paul recounts this event:

A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, “Brother Saul, receive your sight!” And at that very moment I was able to see him. Then he said, “The God of our father has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.” [22:12-15]

In the first version of this story, the voice of the Lord came to Ananias, just as it had to Paul to give him instruction. Moreover, Ananias is identified as “a disciple” who, in addition to being given dispensation to cure Paul’s blindness, also facilitated his receiving of the Holy Spirit. It was only after he had been filled with the Holy Spirit that Paul “got up and was baptized” [9:16]. This is a complete reversal of every conversion up to this point. By convention and sometimes the threat of damnation, only the Twelve had the authority to facilitate the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and, then, only after baptism. The second version glosses over Jesus’s visitation to Ananias altogether and leaves the reader with the impression that he was less a devoted Nazarene and more an independent actor on God’s behalf. No mention is made of the Holy Spirit though Ananias does exhort him to “get up, be baptized, and wash your sins away, calling on his name” [22:16] while giving no clue as to who might have performed that baptism, if not Paul himself.

In contrasting Paul’s conversion with other disciples of the Christ, it would not be difficult to understand why his acceptance into the order might have been troubled from the outset. When coupled with his reportedly bloody history with the believers, it comes as no surprise that troubled quickly turned to murderous as he entered the synagogues of Damascus and began to preach that “Jesus is the Son of God” [9:20]. Note, however, the ambiguity as to the identity of his detractors as he begins his ministry.

All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. [9:21,22]

From reading that passage, one is left with the impression that it was, in fact, non-converted Jews who were the most angered by Saul’s conversion. Yet, as evidenced by the fluidity with which Ananias was transformed from a “disciple” in the first story to a “devout observer of the law” in the second, one can’t help but wonder if Saul’s detractors might not have also been from among the converted in Damascus. Typically, outspoken Nazarenes were persecuted by the temple authority but, Luke writes that, “after many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him” [9:23]. This threat was real enough that, according to legend, Saul had to be smuggled out of the city by being lowered in basket through the wall that he might escape. In Stephen, we have seen the temple incite a mob in order to effect a murder. In Ananias and Sapphira, we saw people killed (presumably by God) in order to maintain discipline among the sect. Of these two groups, who had the greatest motivation to kill Saul whether for his blasphemy or his apparent hypocrisy?

After being run out of Damascus, Paul went to Jerusalem but, Luke tells us, “they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was really a disciple” [9:26]. Only through the intercession of Barnabas, one of the converted elect, was Paul first introduced to the Apostles and then, brought into the fold of believers. This arrangement, unconventional as it was, does not appear to have been a tenable one as Saul “moved freely about Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord” [9:28]. Since the murder of Stephen, there is no mention in the Acts of preaching or miracles being performed in Jerusalem. The strategy, as Luke would have us see it, appears to have been to blend in and act like the law-observing Jews that they largely still were.

Saul, perhaps emulating Stephen who had been killed in his presence, did not do this and, a verse later, we are told that “he talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they wanted to kill him” [9:29]. It leads one to wonder what it was about Saul that made everyone he came in contact with want to kill him (a condition that did not diminish with age). Perhaps unwilling at this time to undergo another major persecution, the Apostles “took him down to Caesaria and sent him off to Tarsus” [9:30] with no mention of a mission or a purpose for his voyage except to get back to where he once belonged. The church, Luke writes, “enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers in the fear of the Lord” [9:31].

Though Saul’s departure from Jerusalem and resultant peace sounds like a resolution to the first act of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke sticks a curious addendum on to the ninth chapter regarding Peter that sets up the next period in the Church’s tumultuous history. In it, Peter performed two miracles; one in Lydda where he healed a paralytic man and then, to Joppa, where he raised a woman named Tabitha from the dead. While it is probably notable that this is the first resurrection in the New Testament since that of Jesus himself, Luke’s purpose here seems to be to show Peter in motion himself away from Jerusalem. It also suggests, as Luke often does, an interest in showing women of the faith as part of the tapestry of believers. Lastly, it places Luke in a very particular place from which the next, improbable segment of the church’s history could evolve.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Three)

The first two installments of this essay can be read here (part 1) and here (part 2).


After Stephen’s martyrdom, Luke indicates that a new level of persecution fell upon the church. In response, the believers were sent away with only the Twelve witnesses/disciples left behind to maintain a presence in Jerusalem. The narrative then switches to Phillip, one of the seven elected to teach from among the converted, who goes to Samaria and finds success spreading the gospel. It is curious that Samaria is listed as the first outreach center as the Samaritans are so widely impugned in the Gospels that one has only to put the word Good” in front of Samaritan to know precisely which Samaritan we mean. Could it be that the Nazarene sect’s persecution in Jerusalem won them sympathetic ears among those who might otherwise be foes?

Luke makes no mention of this irony, writing only that, “the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Phillip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did” [8:6]. Even this little information gives us a pretty good idea of what Phillip’s ministry would have looked like; beginning with an exhortation to repent and be baptized in Jesus’s name, followed by the baptism and indoctrination of the new believers. It is not certain if Phillip continued the communal model of the first Jerusalem congregation though the conspicuous absence of any mention of food or bread breaking suggests that he did not.

While in Samaria, Phillip met “a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city” [8:9] and not only converted him but took him on as a disciple. This relationship is interesting for a couple of different reasons. First, it reiterates, if not confirms, the idea that there was a whole social/vocational class of people who performed miracles among the sick and the poor that we might associate more specifically with the authority of the Christ. When Phillip arrives preaching and performing miracles, there was already an expectation among the people for what he was and what he could do for Simon, “had amazed the nation of Samaria” and “they all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest, saying ‘This man is that power of God which is called Great’” [8:10]. A somewhat skeptical reading of this passage might even suggest that Phillip brought Simon over to his cause first and, by so doing, was able to make a deep impression on the people through his conversion.

After the body of believers there reached a certain threshold, Peter and John came down from Jerusalem to facilitate in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit among them. This indicates at least a two-step initiation into the fold, first baptism in the name of Jesus and then, a meeting with the higher ups to confirm membership and receive the indwelling of the Hold Spirit through the laying on of hands. This passage makes it abundantly clear that while Phillip (and we presume Simon) had the authority to preach, heal, and perform other miracles in Jesus’s name, only one of the twelve witnesses (ie someone who had received instruction from Jesus after his resurrection) could oversee the commission of the Holy Spirit to a new believer. One can understand Simon’s motivation for the pragmatic offer that follows but Peter’s response is especially telling.

Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot it in this matter, for your heart is not right with God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you.” [8:20-22]

Simon, a career magician with an excellent reputation among the Samaritans, treats the laying on of hands to impart the Holy Spirit like a new craft in his trade and is, quite reasonably, willing to pay the originators for the right to use it. The text is ambiguous about who exactly had the authority to baptize in Jesus’s name; perhaps, only the seven elected from the converted, but probably more. The ability to bestow the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was given, initially, only upon the Twelve. Setting aside the theological concerns for a moment, Peter’s response indicated that the Twelve saw their unique role in the two-part initiation process as fundamental to maintaining control over the faith as it spread beyond Jerusalem. Luke spends the rest of the eighth chapter on another anecdote regarding Phillip’s conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch on the road to Gaza that offers little in the way of new information.

Chapter nine, however, is a pivotal one in the Acts of the Apostles as it shifts the narrative away from the Twelve or their disciples and on to a man named Saul. Luke actually references Saul twice in Acts before this chapter, identifying him in passing, first, as present at Stephen’s martyrdom [7:58] and then as an actor in the persecution of the church at Jersualem [8:3]. In fact, it is Saul’s actions against the church that provides the clearest picture that Luke is willing to give us as to what forms that persecution took. Saul, he writes, “laid waste to the church, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” [8:3].

One of two things is true about these attestations. Either the temple could convey the authority to punish (by beating, imprisonment, etc) those who strayed from orthodoxy or they could not, with mounds of evidence supporting both positions. Whole truth and nothing but the truth or not, Luke states this outright, insisting that:

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. [9:1,2]

Stephen’s stoning had seemed like a spontaneous event, though it began in a formal interrogation/trial setting. He was not stoned in the temple but dragged from it and stoned by an anonymous angry mob. The Gospels reiterate over and over that Jews lacked the authority to have a man put to death without Roman involvement. Yet, nowhere is Rome mentioned or implicated in this persecution. Now, we are invited to believe, the temple has the authority to beat and/or imprison whomever they like and can commission others to do this work for them.

Whatever his commission or motive, Saul set famously out on the road to Damascus where he had a very unexpected experience. Saul’s conversion on the road is so central to the Acts of the Apostles overall that the story is told twice, first in chapter nine and second, from Paul’s own lips in the twenty-second chapter. For the purpose of better understanding Luke’s vision of Paul, we’ll look at the two versions side-by-side, watching for additions or subtractions from the story.
In chapter nine, Luke writes:

Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and, suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city and you will be told what to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And, for three days, he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. [9:3-9]

There are five important elements to the story here: the light, the falling down, the voice, the acknowledgement of patronage, and the blindness. Note also that the men accompanying him positively hear the voice, positively do not see Jesus himself (or anyone else for that matter), but ambiguously do not see the light that blinds Paul.

In chapter twenty-two, Paul recounts his story to a group of Jews who, mere verses earlier, were trying to kill him.

“As I made my journey and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said unto me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ And when I could not see because of the brightness of the light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus.” [22:6-11]

All five of the fundamental story elements are perfectly intact from above and delivered in the same order. Light, falling down, voice, acknowledgement of patronage, blindness. But this time, the voice is now not perceived by those who traveled with Paul. Ideologically, this makes more sense because if men also commissioned to persecute Nazarene Jews heard an omniscient voice tell their boss to stop and go await further instructions, they would likely have either made a similarly famous conversion or just knifed him on the spot and gone on with their duties. The difference is subtle but important. In the first account, Paul’s experience with Jesus is a public one. While he alone is spoken to and blinded, all present hear what is said. In the account taken, presumably, from Paul’s own lips, that public miracle becomes a more private one, making his role in it second only to Jesus and, more importantly, making it difficult to prove or disprove since no one but Paul himself heard anything at all.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part Two)

The first portion of this essay can be read here.

After the account of Peter and John’s first interrogation by the temple, the Acts of the Apostles offers a second glimpse into the early organizational structure of the early church. Luke, by this point, has already alluded once to the communal nature of the church, with members selling all of their worldly possessions and placing the proceeds into a pool to meet the needs of all who proclaimed the faith. If that point was already made, however, the urgency by which that arrangement was kept is clearly illustrated in the contrasting stories of Joseph and Ananias and Sapphira.

Joseph, a Cypriot from the tribe of Levi, is offered as an example of one who “sold a field which belonged to him, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” [4:37] and received, in return, the full support of the community and a fancy new nickname proclaiming his dedication. The fifth chapter of Acts, however, presents a darker side of this arrangement as, we are told, a believer named Ananias sold a piece of property and lied about the selling price in order to keep some of the money for himself. Peter was not amused.

Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. [5:1-5]

A few hours later, his wife, Sapphira is called in (not yet knowing her husband was already dead), repeats the lie and is similarly killed on the spot by God for her complicity. Luke does not shy away from the horror of the story as he describes Peter telling her, “Hark, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out” [5:9] in the moment before she dies. Read even within a confined context of just the book of the Acts, this represents a serious departure from nearly every miracle performed by Jesus, the Apostles or, in fact, any disciple in the remainder of the New Testament. It seems to imply that Peter, in addition to the power of healing, offering the forgiveness of sin, and facilitating the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (all in Jesus’s name) now possesses the ability to kill someone instantly, though, notably it is not Jesus but God and the Holy Spirit who are evoked in the act. Whatever Luke’s purpose for including this story in his Acts of the Apostles (be it even the fact that it happened exactly the way he describes), he can not be far from the truth when he writes at the end of the story that “great fear came upon the church and upon all who heard of these things” [5:12].

Peter and John continued their public ministry, gathering in Solomon’s Portico near the entrance of the temple and performing conspicuous miracles so, we are told, people began lining the sick up along the path so “that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them” [5:15]. Their fame among the people became too great for the temple authorities to ignore and so they were seized and thrown into prison. It is notable that Luke identifies in this passage (for the second time in the Acts of the Apostles), the Sadducees as responsible for the church’s persecution whereas the Pharisees had played the role of antagonist against Jesus. Their plans to frighten Peter and John with a stint in the pokey goes sour when “an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out” [5:19], proclaiming that they should go into the temple and teach. This indignation set off a second informal trial against Peter and John wherein they were accused of intending “to bring this man’s blood upon us” [5:28] through their teaching. Peter and John are portrayed as resolutely refusing to discontinue their ministry as they “must obey God rather than men” which infuriated the council. Luke writes that a Pharisee named Gamaliel, however, urged caution to the council in dealing with them and, in so doing, inadvertently reveals something important about the historical context in which the Nazarene sect existed.

And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you do with these men. For before these days, Theudas arose, giving himself out to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred joined him; but he was slain and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him; he also perished and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” [5:35-39]

While the relative merits of Jesus’s ministry on earth may be debated in contrast to that of Theudas or Judas of Galilee, what makes the early Christian movement unique, at least in Luke’s eyes, is its staying power beyond the removal (whether by death or by ascension) of its prime mover. In that sense, Jesus was indisputably (if metaphorically) resurrected as his message continued to harangue the temple authorities long after his disappearance from the city and, indeed, the Earth. Gamaliel’s argument for leniency also suggests to us that Jesus’s ministry of healing the sick and casting out demons was not created in a vacuum but was considered, at least by his critics, as belonging to a tradition of unregulated prophets who had always existed in the Jewish culture as a counterbalance to the legitimized corridors of religious and political authority. Swayed by Gamaliel’s warning, the council sufficed itself with giving the dynamic duo a vigorous beating and then released them again with the same warning to desist preaching and healing in Jesus’s name.

After this second visit to the council, the church underwent something of a transformation as the Twelve created a new hierarchy of disciples elected from the body of followers who had been converted since Jesus’s ascension. On the surface, this decision appears to have been motivated by sheer necessity as the Apostles complain that it “is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables” but what happens immediately after suggests that the church was drawing more attention (and thus more persecution) from the temple authorities and its leaders knew that they would have to abandon Jerusalem as the epicenter for their movement if they were to continue growing at the rate they had enjoyed thus far.

Among these elected “deacons” was Stephen, a man described in the Acts as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” who, in time began to work “great wonders and signs among the people” [6:5,8]. In response to Stephen’s growing fame, a number of the church’s detractors began a whisper campaign against Stephen until he was brought before the council for teaching that “Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place [the temple], and will change the customs which Moses delivered us” [6:14]. Stephen’s self-defense was radically different from Jesus’s as he delivers a short synopsis of the history of the Jewish people from the time of Abraham up through Solomon. Though renounced by Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, this passage lays the groundwork for a theological idea known as progressive revelation wherein it is suggested that God revealed his plan for humanity in stages; stages of which orthodox Judaism (as practiced in the 1st century) was nothing but a vestigial hold-over and Christianity, the most recent and presumably final iteration. Through most of his defense, Stephen embedded this idea into a conversation about the physical temple and its evolution from a tent in the wildness to the architectural wonder produced during Solomon’s reign, noting at the end that “the Most High does not dwell in houses made of hands” [7:48]. Then, he ditched the metaphor and went, instead, for the jugular.

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your father’s persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. [7:51-53]

As the council members seethed at the implication of his defense, Stephen took that moment to look upward and announce that he could see, at that moment, Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That, by Luke’s account, was all the abuse they could stand and “they cast him out of the city and stoned him” [7:58]. Considering what a big deal the council had made about not having the authority to sentence Jesus to death, we might assume that this stoning was implemented by extra-legal means by a mob not directly traceable back to the temple. One can also consider the possibility that executing a lesser-known man like Stephen may have presented less of a threat to their reputation among the people of the Jerusalem than silencing a recognized prophet and miracle worker.

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles (Part One)

Great Books: The Acts of the Apostles
Author: Attributed to “Luke”

Place: City of origin difficult to absolutely pinpoint but touches on most of the Eastern Mediterranean at one point or another

Date written- Placed by different scholars in a period ranging from circa 60 CE to early in the 2nd century.

This essay will reference from the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.

It’s cruel, in a way, to read the Acts of the Apostles apart from the Gospel According to Luke to which it is usually tethered by virtue of sharing an author. The historical elements at the beginning of the Book of Acts line up more cleanly with the ending of Luke’s Gospel while the book, as a whole, continues building on themes that are uniquely Lukan and is richer for the connection. Still, if the work stands the test of time then it must do so on its own merits and, through the excavation of those singular qualities that belong to Acts alone, we may better appreciate the contribution that the author commonly thought of as Luke made to the canon of early Christian writing.

Jesus’s death, resurrection and ascension left early church fathers with something of a dilemma and the opening chapter of Acts addresses its two major components with startling precision. After his resurrection, Jesus spent forty days with his disciples in Jerusalem (unlike the Galilean setting that concludes the book of Matthew) in which, it is said, that he taught them about the kingdom of God that was to come. The common wisdom among Jews of the time was that the Messiah would come to unify them both culturally and militarily and, from that platform, they would retake their homeland that had been overseen by others for over four hundred years. How then, if Jesus had ascended to heaven, could he be the Messiah? Moreover, if Jesus’s intention was to show his divinity to the people of Israel, why did he leave the dissemination of his message in the hands of his followers instead of just taking it to the people himself, as he had done in his earthly ministry?

Luke’s author supplies both questions and most of the answers when he writes:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses…And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” [1:6-11]

The kingdom of heaven, then, was to arrive upon Jesus’s next return to Earth and, echoing Jesus’s preaching on the kingdom of heaven towards the end of the Gospel According to Matthew, the onus fell upon the believers to remain vigilant while accepting that not one among them might truly predict the hour of his return. The kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God, as Luke prefers) was something more profound than just the re-establishment of this dynasty or that dynasty to rule in the stead of the Greeks, Egyptians, Romans or whomever. His reasons for leaving this leg of the ministry in the hands of his “witnesses” rather than carrying the message himself remains somewhat hidden, though perhaps covered under the banner of the plan unfolding on God’s time rather than that of mortals.

Before carrying that ministry to the people in Jesus’s name (rather than his physical presence), the disciples drew lots to fill the position in the organization left open by Judas’s suicide, choosing Matthias who had “accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” and could serve like the others as “a witness to his resurrection” [1:21,22]. While this may seem like mundane housekeeping before the dinner party, the Jews had, when still in possession of their own political sovereignty, chosen their leader by lots. By specifying this method for the selection of a new peer, Luke seems to suggest that the Apostles were taking it back to the old school in defiance of monarchical or imperial methods of rule that had taken root in their culture.

Luke makes note of two basic promises that Jesus made before his ascension; first, that he would return and, second, in his absence, they would receive power from the Holy Spirit. They must have been impressed at the speed with which the second promise was fulfilled, for at the festival of Shavuot (celebrated forty-nine days after Passover to commemorate Moses’s reception of the Torah from God and also tied into harvesting traditions), they were made aware and then filled by the Holy Spirit. This momentous day in the history of the early church, known in the Christian tradition as Pentecost (translated literally, “the fiftieth day”) begins with a private miracle and concludes with a public one.

And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. [2:2-4]

Luke’s goes on to tell us that “devout men from every nation under heaven” lived in Jerusalem at that time and they all heard what the Apostles were saying in the own native tongue. In listing the nations of those who heard (Parthia, Medes, Elam, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Romans, Crete, and Arabia), Luke reveals something about the world these men occupied that is rarely discussed in the Gospels where the only three ethnic players mentioned are Jews, Romans, and Samaritans. In contrast, the disciples’ newfound ability to speak to men (and occasionally women) of many nations, whether fact or metaphor, foreshadows the universal nature of Christianity’s appeal.

Peter used this platform to outline clearly the first precepts of the early church. After proclaiming Jesus as the Christ as predicted by scripture, he bluntly stated that, “Let all the house of Israel know that assuredly God has made him [Jesus] both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you have crucified” [2:26]. So when Peter exhorted people to repent of their sins and ask forgiveness, at least in this context, it wasn’t penance for some nebulous original sin related to the Garden of Eden. It was for having crucified the very person God had sent to free them from slavery, both mental and physical. The only remedy, as far as Peter was concerned, was to “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” [2:28]. Though this baptism is the only prerequisite for salvation that Luke enunciates at the point in the book, a curious addendum on the end of chapter two provides a clearer glimpse after what happened after.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. [2:44-47]

This, in effect, was an amplification of Jesus’s own ministry except it remained in Jerusalem and, if Luke is to be taken at his word, soon resulted in a whole tribe of communally-nested followers of Christ who would attend the Temple en masse, perhaps to discourage discrimination from other sectarians. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that Peter and the others should run up against many of the same political factions that saw to Jesus’s crucifixion.

After Peter and John perform a conspicuous healing outside of the temple, they are brought before the religious authorities residing there to justify upon whose authority they were able to bring about this miracle. This is exactly the same concerns they had about Jesus, a magician of sorts who healed the sick and offered the forgiveness of sins outside of the brokered sacrifice and prayer for which the temple was responsible. Peter was obviously not trying to placate them when he proclaimed that, “this man has been healed…by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead” [4:10].

Faced with a miracle that they could not refute, The temple authorities were forced to let the Apostles go with a stern warning to “not speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” [4:18]. This commandment was, of course, ignored and only added to their zeal in spreading the message among, by Luke’s own account, men and women of every country who dwelt in Jerusalem.

Author Sketch: "Luke"

Author Sketch: “Luke”
Work Under Consideration: The Acts of the Apostles
Place: Unknown though likely suspects include Rome, Antioch, and Ephesus
Time: widely disputed, likely coordinates include before 60 CE, after 70 CE, and the 2nd century CE

Imagine, if you will, a continuum of authorial identity among early Christian writers that begins with Matthew and Mark, about whom we know very little, stretching through to Paul, about whom we know a great deal. Smack dab in the middle of that line is the author commonly known as Luke.

What we can absolutely verify about Luke is scant and derived from the texts that he (or she) left behind. Though our interest in Luke is focused on the Acts of the Apostles, it is widely assumed even among skeptics that the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the same person. Both books open with a direct address to someone named Theophilus (literally, “God-lover”) and share a number of unique theological concerns including the emergence of the Holy Spirit, the universal appeal of Jesus’s message of salvation beyond the borders of Palestine and the relationship of the early church to those on the social margins of the Roman imperial culture.

Early biblical apologists usually associated the author of Luke with Luke the Physician, a companion of Paul who is mentioned explicitly in at least three passages of the New Testament. Acts, in particular, dabbles with curious modulations between the first-person, the first-person plural and third-person reportage that gives the impression, at least, that what we are reading is an eye-witness account. If true, that would clearly date the book as having been written before 60 CE when it is accepted that Paul was taken to Rome for trial. Acts’ failure to report on either Paul’s summary execution or the destruction of the temple and, indeed, Jerusalem itself are given as secondary evidence to support this position. If Luke the Physician is, in fact, the same as Luke the Author, we still know almost nothing about him as the passages wherein he is mentioned identify him only as a companion to Paul who occupied some higher echelon in the early Gentile church.

Others, though, have noted Luke and Acts’ reliance on other historical works of the time (namely by the Roman Jewish writer Josephus) as evidence that they was written considerably later and that Acts, in particular, purposefully omits those two key events in history as a means of obscuring the date of its own creation. Both the Gospel of Luke and Acts seem to grapple with nuances surrounding Jesus’s divinity that were of greater concern to the Church after Paul’s death than during his life. The Acts of the Apostles also becomes decreasingly concerned with the Nazarene sect of Judaism (primarily composed of Jesus’s actual Apostles) and more concerned with Christianity as it spread beyond the borders of Palestine. This makes a strong argument for both Luke and Acts as documents generated by the Gentile church after the destruction of Jerusalem as a means of textually strengthening their direct connection to the source of the tradition.