What do you find in the Acts of the Apostles?

Answer 1

A:Acts of the Apostles is traditionally believed to be a history of the early Church. In support of Acts as a book of history, Sir William Ramsay stated "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians." This is now strongly disputed.

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Uta Ranke-Heinemann (Putting Away Childish Things) says that anyone familiar with recent scholarship would laugh at Ramsay's claim, and says that the whole book is a work of Propaganda aimed at Gentile Christians and Gentiles who have not yet become Christians. Hans Joachim Schoeps writes that Actshas been believed much too readily. Thus, there is a developing consensus amongst New Testament scholars that Acts is not what it seems.

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When we look more closely, we see that a hidden theme in Acts of the Apostles is a comparison between Peter and Paul, such that Peter always comes across as the more worthy apostle. For example, they are both reported as performing comparable miracles, but in each case Paul's miracle was matched by at least one even more awe-inspiring and worthy miracle performed by Peter. Paul had never mentioned performing miracles, but decades later we find Acts attributing miracles to him, with Peter always performing another, somewhat similar but greater miracle and doing greater service for the Church. .

According to Acts, Peter's first miraculous cure was of a man who had been lame since birth but was immediately cured by being commanded to stand and walk. Paul's first miraculous cure was improbably similar to Peter's first cure. Peter's miracle was performed in the name of Jesus, at the Temple, where the faithful saw the healed beggar praising God, and was the opportunity for some outstanding proselytising. Paul's first cure was clumsy and without apparent purpose, given that Paul did not tell the man about Jesus and he was even mistaken for a pagan god.

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In his epistles, Paul talked about having championed the right of gentile converts not to undergo circumcision and not to obey Jewish food laws, mentioning the lack of support he received from Peter. However, Acts makes it clear that these decisions were championed by Peter, and that Paul was not even present when Peter's proposal was accepted. The author of Acts, traditionally Luke but this is very unlikely, was rewriting history.

Answer 2

A:

Acts of the Apostles is the fifth book in the New Testament, traditionally believed to be a history of the early Church. In support of Acts as a book of history, Sir William Ramsay stated "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians." This is now strongly disputed.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann (Putting Away Childish Things) says that anyone familiar with recent scholarship would laugh at Ramsay's claim, and says that the whole book is a work of propaganda aimed at Gentile Christians and Gentiles who have not yet become Christians. Hans Joachim Schoeps writes that Actshas been believed much too readily, saying that Acts is only a retrospective view of Christian origins written by one party - the winners. The book of Acts is not a true history.

Answer 3

How to be saved and the history of the early church.

Answer:

The Acts of the Apostles describe the unhindered spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, from Jew to Gentile, from the Jewish culture to the Greek culture.

Answer 4

The Acts of the Apostles is universally seen as a history of the Church in the years immediately following the resurrection of Jesus, with its focus on the lives and works of St Peter and St Paul. However there are some troubling discrepancies between accounts in this book and the epistles written by Paul himself.

An important, well disguised theme of The Acts of the Apostles is the primacy of St Peter over St Paul during the period of their respective ministries. For example, if Luke attributed a previously unknown miracle to Paul, then his followers or admirers were unlikely to complain, but quite comparable miracles were also associated with Peter, and the miracles associated with Paul were always less impressive those associated with Peter.

According to Paul's own account, he took it upon himself to preach to the Gentiles. He even rebuked Peter in Antioch for refusing to eat with the Gentiles (Galatians 2:11ff). Compare this to Acts chapters 10 and 11, where Peter experienced a miraculous vision and was visited by the Holy Ghost, giving him a sign to bring Gentiles into the Church. In that account, Peter defended his actions in choosing to eat with the Gentiles and asserted that the Church must preach to the Gentiles. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus in search of Paul. Acts places Paul in Tarsus before he commenced his mission to the Gentiles, so Peter was responsible for the Church preaching to the Gentiles and Barnabas took Peter's message to Paul. So, the author of Acts has subtly discredited Paul's earlier assertion that it was he who made the decision to preach to the gentiles.

The author of Acts of the Apostles, writing early in the second century, may have been concerned at the veneration of Paul, and wanted to reduce his stature in the Church and focus worship towards Jesus and the gospel that Luke taught.

Answer 5

A:Acts of the Apostles has long been regarded as an accurate history of the early Church. However, many scholars now dispute this, saying Actsis a book of miracles rather than of history. Uta Ranke-Heinemann (

Putting Away Childish Things) goes as far as to say that the whole of Acts is a simply a work of propaganda.

The real message of Acts is that Paul was not the great apostle he had been considered through most of the first century, but that Peter was a clearly more worthy apostle.

Paul, in his epistles, says

that when God revealed Jesus in him he went to Arabia and only later to Damascus, receiving the gospel from no man but by revelation.

Acts

says that after Paul's dramatic encounter with the spiritual Jesus, he was taken blind and helpless to Damascus where he was taught the gospel.

If Paul was taken, blind and helpless, to receive the gospel from second-level disciples, he could hardly have been the greatest Christian apostle, as he was probably regarded prior to Acts of the Apostles.

Paul says that it was his own decision to preach to the gentiles, and his decision that they did not need to follow Jewish laws of circumcision and diet. According to his original account, Peter was reluctant to accept these radical proposals.Actscounteracts this, saying that Paul only began to preach to gentiles after his total lack of success in preaching to the Jews, and that the proposal to exempt gentiles from Jewish laws came from Peter.

The book begins with a series of miracles performed by Peter, then switches to Paul who also performs a series of miracles comparable to those by Peter. In each case, the miracle associated with Peter is greater or more awe-inspiring than that associated with Paul.

According to

Acts, Paul's first miraculous cure was improbably similar to Peter's first cure. In both cases, a man who had been lame since birth was immediately cured by being commanded to stand and walk. Peter's first miracle cure was performed in the name of Jesus, at the Temple, where the faithful saw the healed beggar praising God, and was the opportunity for some outstanding proselytising. Paul's first cure was clumsy and without apparent purpose, given that Paul did not tell the man about Jesus and he was even mistaken for a pagan god.

Answer 6

The Acts of the Apostles contains a detailed account of the early Christian church after the resurrection of Jesus, focusing on the actions and teachings of the apostles, especially Peter and Paul. It describes the spread of Christianity, the workings of the Holy Spirit, and the challenges and triumphs faced by the early believers.

Answer 7

Is about the actions of the Apostles