A Little Bible Handbook
Online Version
The Acts of the Apostles
There is only one book of “Acts” in the New Testament, though it is a type of writing not uncommon in the ancient world. This work is an account of the doings (“acts”) of the earliest Christians. Interestingly, it appears to be written by the same author who wrote the Gospel of Luke (compare the first lines of chapter one in both documents.)The Letters of Saint Paul
The life and writings of Paul occupy almost as many pages in the New Testament as do the Gospels. A powerful and controversial person, Paul even today is able to inspire and enrage. He cannot be ignored, and his importance to the Christian faith cannot be denied.Paul was not an apostle during Jesus’ earthly ministry. In fact he belonged, at the time, to a powerful and conservative coalition of Jewish leaders - the Pharisee party - which engineered Jesus’ execution and tried vigorously to suppress the new religion. His conversion came with a vivid first-hand experience of the risen Christ, an account of which is in Acts, chapter 9. He himself talks briefly about this experience in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, and in Galatians 1:12-16.
Following his conversion, Paul went from city to city organising congregations. Eventually he developed a far-flung network, with which he kept in touch by mail. His often lengthy letters, containing a mixture of instruction, criticism, and encouragement, were read aloud when his congregations gathered for worship. Some had such a profound impact on people that they were preserved, and eventually became part of the New Testament. After Paul’s death, the fame of these letters was such that anonymous authors began to pay the compliment of trying to write in the same style. In time, some of the imitative letters became mixed with Paul’s own, and are included with his in the Bible.
If you look on the Contents page of your Bible, the books immediately following Acts, from Romans to Philemon, are all letters attributed to Paul. They are arranged in order of size: Romans is the longest, and Philemon the shortest. There is no attempt to arrange them chronologically, and no classification by subject-matter.
All but three letters are named for the congregations to which they were sent, and those congregations, in turn, were known to Paul simply by the name of the city or district in which they met. Romans is thus a letter to those who met and worshipped in the city of Rome; 1 Corinthians is the first of two letters to Christians who met in the city of Corinth; and so on. The word “Philemon” is simply a person’s name, and the letter bearing that name is a quick, fascinating, note from Paul to that person. Similarly, 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy are letters sent to an individual.
Paul’s biggest concern
Paul frequently refers to “circumcision.” He is speaking of the rite which Jews have always used to make boys and men into full members of their faith community.Paul’s contemporaries held that if “gentiles” (non-Jews) wanted to become Christians, the men among them must first become completely Jewish - through circumcision, particularly, but also through adherence to all the other regulations of Judaism. Paul disputed this.
Paul, however, had come to believe that humans can not “earn” Godıs favour by keeping regulations. We must live morally, of course, but we will never be able to do it so well as to impress God with our goodness. We have, Paul said, an earthly side which always somehow pulls us down.
The only solution therefore is to put our trust, our “faith,” in Jesus who died for us. We have to get inside Christ - and allow Christ to get inside us - rather than structuring our lives around legislation. Paul attacked circumcision as the most vivid symbol of trying to impress God through the keeping of regulations, and in so doing he pioneered a revolution in the way Christians approach all of faith and life. Read Genesis 17:11-12, Galatians 2 & 3, and Acts 15 for background.
