CHAPTER 8
Well, after Stephen has been killed, people have to
scatter. We’re told that they go across
the area, and only the apostles stay in Jerusalem. People kept trying to destroy the church – with Saul leading the
charge against them.
But enough about that, because we get an oddly placed segue
that focuses on the apostle Phillip.
We’re told he goes to Samaria (which is odd, because just three verses
earlier this book explicitly told us the apostles stayed in Jerusalem.
Anyhow, Phillip does good deeds, and wins over some
supporters, most notably a magician named Simon (who becomes devoted to
Philip). Tales of Phillip’s accomplishments reaches Jerusalem, and they send
Peter and John down to help. The
apostles pray to lay the Holy Spirit on the new followers. Simon sees this and offers Peter money to
know how to do it. To put it mildly,
Peter doesn’t think much of this plan.
He demands Simon repent, and it appears he does.
Phillip takes to the road in search of new converts, and
finds a doozy. Actually, it’s a scene I
remember from the TV mini-series “A.D.” – it’s Phillip and the Ethiopian
treasurer. Essentially, the treasurer
picks Phillip up in an ancient version of hitchhiking. Phil spreads the good news about Christ, and
the treasurer is tickled to hear it, and converts as soon as they come to a
river (for water to baptize him with).
Mission accomplished, God immediately snatched Phillip away to go
elsewhere.
It’s a little weird, because we had just been introduced
into the Saul-Paul cycle of stories right before the Phillip stories, and now
that this little detour is over, we’ll go back to Saul next chapter. Maybe it was just some stories Luke didn’t
know how to incorporate otherwise. But
to me it reads like a possible later addition.
This was the book about the apostles, and a guy knew some Phillip
stories left out of the original, and so added them here. May as well put them here – it is after
people started leaving Jerusalem but before the Saul-Paul stories really get
going. (One problem: we end up with Phillip converting a gentile before the
apostles decide doing so is a good idea.
So yeah, these stories are probably a later addition).
There is one other thing about this story that is remarkable
– Ethiopia would be a Christian land until, well, essentially it still is.
Christianity worked its way down there during the Roman/Byzantine times and
managed to survive. It lost out in some
other places it had once been established in, but survived there. It’s the historic stronghold for Christ in
Africa. And wouldn’t you know it, you
get the story of Phillip with an Ethiopian.
CHAPTER 9
Back to Saul. He’s
on the hunt to persecute more Christians, when something happens. He’s going to Damascus to help Jews there
persecute Christians where one of the most famous incidents of the Bible
occurs. He’s blinded by a heavenly
light, and hears a voice ask, “Why are you persecuting me?” When Saul asks who is talking, the voice
says it’s Jesus.
Interestingly, there are some people with Saul. I think the story works better if it’s just
a personal Saul-Jesus meeting with no one else there. But then again, if he is blind and on the road by himself, he
won’t survive. The others hear the
voice as well, by the way. It scares
them – a voice and no face to go with it!
Blind Saul enters the town, and after a few days, he gets
some unexpected help. Jesus has spoken
in a dream to a good Christian named Ananias.
Jesus tells Ananias to go to Saul and offer help. Use the power Christ is now giving him, and
let Saul see again. Ananias is rather
skittish when he first hears this – you want me to help the top persecutor of
Christians? Are you sure you’ve thought
this one through, oh Lord? Jesus
assures him that yes, this is the way to go.
Saul is an instrument of Jesus, and will later preach the word to the
gentiles. So Ananias goes off to help.
After a quick applying of the hands and prayer, scales fall
from Saul’s eyes. He’s been blind for
three days (during which time he neither ate nor drink, which sound like bad
ideas to me, but never mind). Anyhow,
the most famous conversion of all-time has just taken place. Saul is now on the side of those he had been
persecuted.
Saul (and yes, the Bible still calls him Saul here, and for
a little bit later) starts spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to the
people of Damascus. The Jews are
floored – this is not the message they expected to hear from this guy. Eventually, they get upset and the situation
is now too hot for Saul. His followers
help him escape, lowering Saul from the walls of Damascus hiding in a basket.
Immediately after that, Saul goes to Jerusalem to consult
with the apostles. He wins them over
and learns from them. At least, that’s
the version we get in Acts. Later, in
one of his letters, Paul tells a different story. He’ll say he didn’t go to Jerusalem and argue that his knowledge
of Christ comes not from some third party source like the apostles, but
directly from Christ in heaven. This’ll
be an issue later on. For now, I’ll just
note that sometimes the stories told of Paul here are at odds with the words by
Paul about Paul. (Note: at this point
in Acts he’s still called Saul, though).
Meanwhile, Peter performs some miracles, most notably
bringing a girl named Tabitha back from the dead. But she wasn’t nearly as dead as Lazarus had been, so no one
remembers this story. That seems to be
a shame.
CHAPTER 10
Now we see a historical shift in focus begin. So far, the apostles had looked just to Jews
for converts. (Well, aside from Phillip
and the Ethiopian, that is). In Chapter 10, the decision is made to convert
gentiles.
It begins with a vision.
A Roman centurion named Cornelius is a believer in God. He is Jewish in everything but circumcision
– but that means he isn’t Jewish. He
has a vision from God telling him to see Peter, who is in town.
While Cornelius is processing that, God sends a second
vision to Peter. Basically, it’s a
vision of pork chops. No, not exactly –
but God gives Peter a vision of all sorts of animals (including some which Jews
are not to eat according to the laws of Moses). God tells Peter to feast on them, but Peter protests – he knows
the rules. God responds with a great
line, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” Yeah, nice line. The laws are in place not because Moses said so – but because God
said so. And if God says, “Never mind”
that means you don’t have to mind the laws.
This makes lots of sense. Just
to drive the point home, God repeats the message three times in all. (Boy, I guess Peter went to be hungry to
have so much food in his holy vision).
At any rate, Peter is trying to figure out what the vision
of righteous bacon meant, when Cornelius sees him. Ah! Now it all makes
sense! OK, so Cornelius isn’t snipped,
but if God thinks he is clean, who is Peter to say Cornelius is profane? And so Peter welcomes him into the
church.
This is the key moment.
Peter is now on board with converting gentiles to the religion without
making them undergo traditional Jewish rituals – like circumcision. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a
Christian. The Jesus movement is
becoming a completely different religion instead of a new variation on Judaism.
CHAPTER 11
Peter, convinced of converting gentiles, now convinces the
other apostles of this approach. It’s a
short chapter and half of it basically repeats what was said in Chapter 10, but
the upshot: everyone is on board with this new approach. Let’s start converting
gentiles as well.
With the new approach, a church dedicated to Christ is
established in the gentile town of Antioch.
And there, we get a new name for the followers of Christ:
Christians. They get the name from
gentiles in order to distinguish them from Jews. That’s why the name emerges with the new approach. And it’s just
another step in become a different religion – having a different name.
CHAPTER 12
Meanwhile, persecution of the Christians continues. King Herod apparently really hates
them. He has the apostle James – the
brother of John one, not the other James – is killed by a sword. The Jews liked this, so Herod arrests Peter
during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
He puts pretty elaborate security precautions in place, putting four
squads of four soldiers each with Peter in double chains. Man, that’s some serious overkill, isn’t
it? All these precautions are only
needed if you really think the Lord is going to help Peter. Wait – no, then they’d be futile (spoiler!)
because – dude: Lord! Thank you. There
is one other reason to engage in all these security precautions: it makes a
more dramatic story when Peter does escape (spoiler!). Yeah, I think that this story is either
inflated greatly or just a fable.
Peter is in jail, and the Lord stages a jailbreak. The shackles fall from his wrists. An angel guides him out past the
guards. Peter recovers his senses and
dashes to the house of Mary, “the mother of John who is called Mark.” So this Mary isn’t one of our famous Marys
from the gospel. But “John who is
called Mark” happens to be the Mark as in Gospel of Mark. (You can’t have two Gospels According to
John, so they went with his nickname).
Everyone is amazed to see Peter.
In fact, when some are first told that Peter is there, the replay is
“You are out of your mind.” Heh. Even in a book people full of miracles
people aren’t expecting to se Peter again.
Well, Peter tells people to report his escape to James. According to the footnotes, this James isn’t
the surviving apostle James. No, it’s
the brother of Jesus – James Christ.
He’ll come up again in the epistles portion of the New Testament. Why, he ever wrote one of the epistles. And our first non-Christian report on the
Christians – Josepheus’s history of the Jews, notes that James the brother of
Jesus was the leader of the Christian movement in Jerusalem after his brother’s
death. (Note: Josepheus wasn’t just a
historian, but essentially a contemporary.
He survived the big 66-70 AD rebellion and wrote his history after
it. He was at best a small boy when
Christ died, but he certainly overlapped with the apostles).
Anyhow, the point is this – while we always think of the
early church being Jesus and the apostles and then St. Paul – the leader of the
main branch of the movement was James Christ in Jerusalem. But his branch got snipped off by the big
66-70 uprising that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. (According to Josepheus, James was already
dead by the time the Romans stormed the city).
We’ll see James keep appearing throughout, and sometimes he is referred
to as the brother of Jesus. And he
always is a guy with juice. The most
important pre-Paul figures in the church were James Christ, Peter, and John.
Oh, Herod orders the execution of the 16 guards on duty when
Peter escaped. Bummer. These are incidental casualties, ones caught
in the crossfire; just like the babies murdered in the slaughter of innocents
in the Gospel According to Matthew.
Well, the good news is that I doubt either incident happened, so let’s
move on.
Herod dies. And I do
believe this is the last chapter in the book not to primarily focus on
Saul/Paul. He comes up at the end, though.
We learn that he and Barnabas have finished a mission and returned to
Jerusalem. Then they go out again,
taking “John who is called Mark.” Man,
that’s a confusing nickname.
CHAPTER 13
This chapter recounts some wanderings on behalf of Christ by
Saul/Paul and his posse (Barnabas and John/Mark).
Most notably, we finally change names on Saul. He’s now called Paul. I thought his name change was supposed to
signify his religious conversion. He’s
become a new man so he gets a new name.
Nope. It’s nothing like
that. Paul is just the gentile name for
Saul. Now that he’ll primarily being
working the gentile beat, he’s known by their variation on his name. He thus never really changes his name. Huh.
I didn’t know that.
Paul defeats a magician named Bar-Jesus in Cyprus. He then gives a long sermon at a synagogue
at Antioch, which most rehashes the Old Testament, but (naturally) culminates
with the coming of Jesus Christ. This
makes a big impact and draws a sizable crowd – almost the whole city, we’re
told. But they’re not all happy. The Jews were jealous and violently
contradict Paul.
In fact, they have Paul and Barnabas expelled from
town. I like the line that describes
what Paul and Barnabas did next: “So they shook the dust from their feet in
protest against them and went to Iconium.”
I just love how that’s put.
Starting the sentence with “So” makes it all seem so matter of act. “So I got out of bed after waking up.” “So I belched after eating.” These guys have just been kicked out of town
– but, hey – no biggee. They’ll
survive. I also like the phrase “shook
the dusty from their feet.” It’s not
terribly original, but it just paints a picture in my mind of guys matter of
factly responding to their setback by getting up and moving on. They’re not going to let some hostility
prevent them from spreading God’s word.
As we’ll see, Paul can take a licking and keep on ticking.
CHAPTER 14
Now in Iconium, Paul and Barnabas have the same problems as
before. They found some converts among
the Jews and Greeks, but, “the disbelieving Jews stirred up and poisoned the
minds of the Gentiles against the brothers.”
Things get pretty heated. In
fact, we’re told that an attempt was made to stone Paul and Barnabas, so they
had to leave. The passage isn’t really
clear is there was a stoning – “When there was an attempt by both Gentiles and
the Jews, together with their leaders, to attack and stone them” – so were rocks
thrown or not? I guess not, because
later we get an actual attempted stoning, and it’s clear what happened. Still, Paul and Barnabas all kinds of
problems. But hey – Jesus did say he
came to bring not peace but the sword.
Next, they come to the Greek town of Lystra. They have a different sort of problem
here. When the locals see them perform
miracles and acts of heeling, they have their own classically Greek interpretation
– they are Greek gods. They call
Barnabas “Zeus” and figure that Paul is Hermes. OK, now that’s funny for two reasons. First, I get a kick of these guys missing the point and declaring
the messengers to be gods – and part of the wrong god system at that! Also, it’s funny that Paul doesn’t get top
billing. The Bible explains he’s called
Hermes because he’s the mouthpiece. I
guess they figure Barnabas is The Man behind The Man.
Well, Paul and Barnabas try to set everyone straight, but
run into new problems instead. Some
Jews from Antioch come up and rile everyone up against the Christian
missionaries. It was the people of
Antioch, you might recall, that wanted Paul and Barnabas stoned. Well, they finally get their stoning. Paul is stoned and dragged out of town,
believed to be dead. But he wasn’t
dead. I don’t know if he was
unconscious or just playing possum, but once he’s dumped outside town (for the
wild animals to eat up, I guess), he gets up.
He and Barnabas leave for Derbe.
Well, the chapter ends with the boys retracing their steps,
going back to Lystra and Iconium and Antioch to bolster the spirits of the
Christians in each town. Huh. So despite their horrible treatment, they
had set their seeds. (It’s just like
the parables of Christ – start with a small seed, but plant in rich soil and
watch it grown into a mighty plant.
That’s exactly what Paul is doing. He is the Johnny Appleseed of the
early Christian church). However hated
Paul and Barnabas were when they left towns, things had apparently cooled down
enough to allow them to return in peace.
It sounds like they’re mostly looking after the Christians already there
instead of preaching and trying to convert the masses. Yeah, that’ll help. They’d be less in people’s faces, and
keeping a lower profile.
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