PAUL'S CONVERSION: Proof of Christianity

The following are videos from my class on Acts. (Sorry about the quality. You will need to turn the volume up to hear it. I will be working on this in the future.):

*PAUL'S ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS: Contradictions, Vision or Real?

*PAUL'S CONVERSION: Proof of Christianity

Resources for these two class sessions:

*Parallel Accounts of Paul's Conversion from Acts 9, 22 and 26....plus pertinent sections from his letters and additional cross references related to the accounts of Paul's conversion found in Acts. All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version (NIV). This is the handout used in the first video posted above ("Paul's Encounter With Jesus: Contradictions, Vision or Real?).

*Handout for "Paul's Conversion: Proof of Christianity

*Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Paul by George Lyttleton. This is a condensed version (about 9 pages) of the original 90 page book. This is what my class is based on, as mentioned.

*Observations on the conversion and apostleship of St. Paul : in a letter to Gilbert West, Esq. The book originally published in 1754.

THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON: Resources for Study

 ARTICLES

*Josephus: Historical Evidence Of The Old Testament Canon. Here is an excellent short article on the clearest evidence that we have for the extent of the Old Testament during the time of Jesus and the apostles. Josephus was a Jew and was from a wealthy priestly family. This article gives two important quotes from Josephus: one tells us of the extent of the Old Testament and the other tells us how firmly it was established that no one dared add or subtract from it. Josephus is our earliest and clearest evidence for these issues.

VIDEOS

*How we got the OT Canon: Evidence for the Bible pt11 by Mike Winger (50 minutes)

*How was the Old Testament canon formed? (8 minutes)

BOOKS

*The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism by Roger Beckwith. The standard book on this subject.

*The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce (1988). Covers both the Old and New Testament canons. 

THE GOSPEL OF MARK IS PETER'S TESTIMONY: 6 Early Church Fathers Confirm

Here are six early church fathers who provide reliable, authoritative and independent confirmation that Mark's Gospel is based on the testimony of the apostle Peter. 

These testimonies are all written within 40 to 130 years of the earliest possible date for the death of Mark. 

Dates for the publication of the Gospel of Mark itself range from c.40 to 70 AD. So these testimonies for the origin of Mark's Gospel are all given within a range of 40 to 160 years of its publication. That is extraordinarily early unanimous independent testimony for its origin. I am unaware of any other ancient document that has this kind of testimony to its provenance.

Papias, quoting the apostle John, of whom he was a disciple (writing c.110 AD):

"And the Elder [the apostle John] used to say this: 'Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teaching as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Consequently, Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything which he had heard, or to make any false statements in them.' Such, then, is the account given by Papias with respect to Mark" (from Papias' 5-volume work The Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord as recorded in Eusebius' Church History 3.39)

*for more on Papias, see my blog article: The Importance of Papias, The Disciple of the Apostle John

Justin Martyr (writing c.132-165 AD):

“And when it is said that He changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and when it is written in the memoirs of him [Peter] that this so happened, as well as that He changed the names of other two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means sons of thunder. . ." (Dialogue with Trypho 106, emphasis mine). Compare this with Mark 3:16-17: "These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), 17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means “sons of thunder”),...." This is found only in the Gospel of Mark and not in the other three New Testament Gospels or any of the gnostic or apocryphal writings (including the Gospel of Peter that some have carelessly attributed as the source of Justin's statement).

Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the Apostle John (writing c.180 AD):

"....Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter." (Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapter 1)

Clement of Alexandria, who assumed leadership of the catechetical school founded by Mark at Alexandria (Clement assumed leadership of this "seminary" and wrote c.180-200 AD):

"But so great a light of godliness shone upon the minds of Peter’s listeners that they were not satisfied with a single hearing or with the oral teaching of the divine proclamation. So, with all kinds of exhortations they begged Mark (whose Gospel is extant), since he was Peter’s follower, to leave behind a written record of the teaching given to them verbally, and did not quit until they had persuaded the man, and thus they became the immediate cause of the Scripture called “The Gospel According to Mark.” And they say that the apostle, aware of what had occurred because the Spirit had revealed it to him, was pleased with their zeal and sanctioned the writing for study in the churches. Clement (of Alexandria) quotes the story in the sixth book of Hypotyposes, and the bishop of Hierapolis, named Papias, corroborates him" (as quoted in Eusebius' Church History 2.15; also see 6.25: written c.324 AD).

Tertullian (writing c. 207 AD):

"....I mean the Gospels of John and Matthew — while that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter's whose interpreter Mark was."(Against Marcion, Book 4, Chapter 5).

Origen, one of the greatest intellects of the early church (writing between 215 and 250 AD):

"The second [Gospel] is by Mark, who composed it according to the instructions of Peter, who in his Catholic epistle acknowledges him as a son, saying, 'The church that is at Babylon elected together with you, salutes you, and so does Marcus, my son.'" [1 Peter 5:13] (as Eusebius notes was recorded in Origen's "first book on Matthew's Gospel, Eusebius' Church History 6.25.3-5: written c.324 AD)

CONCLUSION:

From this we can conclude that the Gospel of Mark is based faithfully and accurately on the eyewitness testimony of the Apostle Peter as written down by his beloved assistant Mark (1 Peter 5:13: "my son Mark"). And note that the Apostle John is emphatic that Mark "made it his one concern not to omit anything which he had heard, or to make any false statements in them." 

Flemish School (c. 1600), Christ Calling Saint Peter (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

WHO ARE THE APOSTLES & THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS?

 The following are resources used in or as follow-up for a presentation that I am doing February 4, 2023 at 10:30am at Maple City Chapel in Goshen, Indiana for a meeting of the GOSHEN APOLOGETICS FELLOWSHIP: 

• Who Are The Apostles?
• CHART #1: Apostolic Fathers & 2nd Century Church Leaders (Fathers)
• CHART #2: Apostolic Fathers & 2nd Century Church Leaders (Fathers)
• Records of the Apostolic Fathers Relationships to the Apostles
• What the Apostolic Fathers Said about the Apostles
• The Presentation Slides (Unfortunately it did not format correctly but can be used to easily make a new set of presentation slides.)
• The video of the presentation will appear here later.
• My blog page: "Who Are The Apostolic Fathers?"

"If there is a god, why is there so much suffering in the world?"

 I'm in a group on Facebook for those who have a rare form of kidney cancer called chromophobe. And many of us freely share our faith there and how we trust God in spite of what we are going through. Someone shared this beautiful picture of Jesus standing in the midst of the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as an artist's conception of the story from the book of Daniel. This, of course, got a lot of amens from several Christians in the group. But a couple of people had a very different response: "...if there is a god, why is there so much suffering in the world?"

I took the time to respond and I thought I would share that response here, too:

//That is probably the #1 question among both Christians and non-Christians: If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?   Interestingly, very few people ask: If God does not exist, why is there so much beauty and good and love in the world? And I think that question presents a much bigger challenge when examined carefully. 

But I don't say that to minimize the difficulty of the question you raise. I found out 9 years ago that I had kidney cancer. And I have been living for 6 1/2 years as a stage 4 chromophobe patient--realizing that I am constantly being threatened with death. And I have seen people that I care about deeply and have prayed for earnestly (including in this group) suffer greatly and die. So, yeah, I have asked this question myself and had my own angry, tear-filled arguments with God. 

To make matters worse, there is no simple answer. No where in the Bible does God send someone with a simple satisfying answer to this question. In the book of Job (which deals with this question more directly than any other place in the Bible), the only answer that Job gets is (to paraphrase): "Job, you aren't big enough to understand. I'm the God who created this world and your just a puny little human. You are just going to have to trust me with this."

That is not the kind of answer that we naturally want, of course. But when we actually learn to trust God, there is a peace that transcends any attempts at understanding.

That is not to say that we should not seek any kind of answer or that the Scriptures give us no answer. I myself have spent more than 40 years thinking about these difficult kinds of questions and doing my best to answer them reasonably and with integrity. Thirty years ago I took a masters level class exploring this very issue. And the issue is very very complex. But if I were to boil it down, I think the overall answer looks something like this: God created us as beings with free will because he wanted beings like himself that are able to love--and you can't get that with a robot programmed to do only what you want it to do. He did it knowing that we would inevitably do what was unloving. And we did and continue to do so. And those unloving acts are what we call sin. And sin destroys and causes suffering and ultimately death. And we all recognize that at some level. We at least recognize the pain and suffering that others cause us--though we may be slow to recognize how some sins do so...especially our own. And we may be slow to understand how our sin has led to the decay in the world that leads to natural disasters and disease. 

And again, though God knew all this would result, he had a plan to bring something beautiful out of all of it. He has a plan to limit the extent of this destruction of sin. It will not go on forever. When the time is right, he will intervene and make all things right. And the suffering of this world will seem like nothing in light of our eternity with him. For "our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all" (2 Corinthians 4:17).

But I think there is a nagging question that really lies behind this question: "Does God care about our suffering? Or does he just sit out there on his throne far removed from us in some other dimension that we call heaven?" And the Bible does give a clear answer to that important question--a clear and emphatic answer. He became one of us and lived in the midst of our pain and experienced it in every way that we do. And then he died and suffered a very cruel and humiliating death to pay the cost for the sin that he allowed--our sin. And he did it so that he could be both just and the justifier of those who put their trust in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26).

So that is as concise an answer as I can give to this very thorny and emotional question. I hope it helps. I know that it has been helpful to me. Blessings, friends.//

 

AN UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCE Between Acts and Archaeology

 I recently learned a new undesigned coincidence while watching a documentary. The documentary ("The Last Apostle"--included with Amazon Prime) features a modern-day William Ramsay named Dr. Mark Fairchild. Fairchild is professor of New Testament at Huntington University in Huntington, Indiana. And the documentary follows Fairchild on a two-week trip through Turkey, following the footsteps of Paul. Very interesting and worth the two hours.

Anyways, in Acts 13:4ff, Paul and Barnabas meet the proconsul Sergius Paulus on the island of Cyprus and he becomes a believer. After they leave Cyprus, they sail to Perga and from there make the 3-4 week trek by foot to Pisidian Antioch. Towards the end of the documentary, Fairchild begins to talk about this event as they head towards Pisidian Antioch. And he says (in a rather matter-of-fact way) that after the proconsul Sergio Paulus is converted, he asks Paul and Barnabas to go to Pisidian Antioch to bring the Gospel to his friends and relatives. 

I didn't remember reading that, so I turned to Acts 13 and found that Acts says nothing about such a conversation--not even a hint. So I'm a little confused at this point. (Maybe I missed something Fairchild said, as I was doing something else as I was watching.) At any rate, after Fairchild reaches Pisidian Antioch, he heads to the local museum where they are housing a recently discovered inscription bearing the name Sergius Paulus! So Fairchild concludes rather confidently that Sergius Paulus is from Pisidian Antioch and that the reason that Paul and Barnabas travel to Pisidian Antioch is because Sergius Paulus pleads with them to do so. This makes good sense in light of the recent find of this inscription of Sergius Paulus at Pisidian Antioch--yet Luke does not even hint at it in Acts.

This is an interesting way in which archaeology fills in information that Acts does not give us but which makes perfect sense in light of what Acts does tell us. This does not happen with fiction. This happens with reliable eyewitness accounts. 

Check out this excellent article from Bible Archaeology Report that not only has a photo of the Sergio Paulus inscription featured in Fairchild's documentary but also another found near Pisidian Antioch and others from Cyprus (where Paul met Sergius Paulus in Acts 13).

Also, here is the link to The Last Apostle documentary where I first learned about this.

To learn more about what an "undesigned coincidence" is, why it is such a powerful evidence of reliable eyewitness testimony and to see many more examples....see my article here.

Elymas the sorcerer is struck blind before Sergius Paulus. Painting by Raphael. Public domain.

ARE THE GOSPELS FACT OR FICTION?: A conversation with three experts

The YouTube video that preserves this live stream event is found here.

............

Don't miss this! I am super excited about this opportunity--as I've been asked to host this interview!

Here's your chance to hear evidence for the Gospels that you likely never heard before....as three experts offer new and creative insights into the Gospels from philosophy, literature, ancient history, and comparative religions.