I was struck by Lydia McGrew's comments on Acts 12. We should give more consideration than I think we typically do to what it would have been like to have been an apostle in a context like Acts 12 or 2 Corinthians 11, for example, where Paul mentions many of the hardships he went through. What if you knew that something like Acts 12:2 could so easily happen to you, that somebody like Herod could decide to murder you to please a crowd on such short notice, and you wouldn't know who's next (e.g., Peter later in the chapter)? Even if you were somebody like John, who survived the persecutions we read about in Acts and Paul's letters, it would be a miserable way to live.
If anybody is interested, I wrote a series on the death of the apostles several years ago. It addresses a lot of related issues, such as the objections critics often raise and the information we can gather on the death of the apostles from non-Christian sources. See here.
Since the notion that Jesus and the early Christians were wrong about the timing of the second coming came up during the webcast, here's a post I wrote several years ago that briefly summarizes several points on the subject. Some of the points I make there are ones that, in my experience, aren't often discussed when the issue comes up. And I link to another post that discusses the topic further, if anybody wants to read more about it. But the post I just linked is short. You can get an overview of the topic by just taking a few minutes to read the post.
Luke's census came up near the end of the webcast. I've written a lot on the subject over the years, and I'll just link a few posts here. Go here for a collection of links to brief Facebook posts I wrote on some of the issues involved. Here's my correction of the misconception that the census required people to register according to their ancestry. And here's a series I wrote in 2007 that focuses on the patristic evidence, which is often neglected when the census comes up. In a 2010 post, I summarized several issues relevant to evaluating the passage. More recently, in 2016, I wrote a post interacting with Annette Merz, a New Testament scholar, on the subject.
A lot of good points were made.
ReplyDeleteI was struck by Lydia McGrew's comments on Acts 12. We should give more consideration than I think we typically do to what it would have been like to have been an apostle in a context like Acts 12 or 2 Corinthians 11, for example, where Paul mentions many of the hardships he went through. What if you knew that something like Acts 12:2 could so easily happen to you, that somebody like Herod could decide to murder you to please a crowd on such short notice, and you wouldn't know who's next (e.g., Peter later in the chapter)? Even if you were somebody like John, who survived the persecutions we read about in Acts and Paul's letters, it would be a miserable way to live.
If anybody is interested, I wrote a series on the death of the apostles several years ago. It addresses a lot of related issues, such as the objections critics often raise and the information we can gather on the death of the apostles from non-Christian sources. See here.
Since the notion that Jesus and the early Christians were wrong about the timing of the second coming came up during the webcast, here's a post I wrote several years ago that briefly summarizes several points on the subject. Some of the points I make there are ones that, in my experience, aren't often discussed when the issue comes up. And I link to another post that discusses the topic further, if anybody wants to read more about it. But the post I just linked is short. You can get an overview of the topic by just taking a few minutes to read the post.
Luke's census came up near the end of the webcast. I've written a lot on the subject over the years, and I'll just link a few posts here. Go here for a collection of links to brief Facebook posts I wrote on some of the issues involved. Here's my correction of the misconception that the census required people to register according to their ancestry. And here's a series I wrote in 2007 that focuses on the patristic evidence, which is often neglected when the census comes up. In a 2010 post, I summarized several issues relevant to evaluating the passage. More recently, in 2016, I wrote a post interacting with Annette Merz, a New Testament scholar, on the subject.