CLAS / PHIL 2610 Paganism to Christianity

Reading Handout 9. Acts of the Apostles

Reading for Thursday, March 14, 2002

Reading

Norlin Reserve: Acts of the Apostles 1-9; 13-22 (p. 156-68; 172-86)

St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles form part of an organic plan devised and written by a single person for the benefit of a catechumen (a person studying to be baptized) named Theophilus. Theophilus lived on the margins of the church but was a sympathizer or acute observer of what went on in it. This two part "history of the rise of Christianity" was written to capture this reader's sympathy but also to demonstrate to a broader audience, a Greek speaking, non-Jewish audience, that Christianity had as much right to existence as did the Jewish religion to which it was so closely linked. It thus portrays a single economy of salvation in which Jewish and Christian teaching are shown as part of the same tradition, a tradition based in the fulfillment of the will of God.

Luke was probably a doctor from Syrian Antioch. He converted to Christianity not from Judaism but apparently from paganism and he came to know St. Paul while Paul was resident in Antioch. From there he travelled with Paul on his second and third journeys. He actually narrates the sections of his narrative in which he took part in the second person plural ("we"). Ultimately Luke followed Paul on his final journey to Jerusalem and then to Rome where Paul was to be tried before the emperor. Only later did he compose his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, probably sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. His narrative in Acts tells the story of the early church in Jerusalem, how it was persecuted and how it began to spread outside of Judaea. Above all, Luke describes the crucial role played by Paul in spreading Christianity through three missionary journeys in Asia, Macedonia and Greece (see reverse for map). The Acts are our key source, indeed our only contemporary historical source, for the growth of Christianity in its first fifty years.

Questions

1. How were the early Christians treated by the gentiles (non-Jews)? How were they treated by the Roman Imperial authorities? How were they treated by local (city) authorities?

2. What debates do the Christians have with Jews? What tensions and debates were there among the Christians themselves?

3. How was Paul received in the various cities he visited? Who were his enemies? Who were his allies?

4. Did Paul really want to convert the Jews or was his object rather to oppose them? Did his attitude toward the Judaism change over time?

5. Based on what you can learn in Acts, how did the early Christian hierarchy work? What were the channels of authority?

6. How did the early Christians convert people to their religion? How many did they convert? How quickly did the church seem to grow? What sorts of social classes joined the church? What ethnicities?

7. What would have happened with Christianity had there been no St. Paul?