AN ATHEISTIC BIBLE STUDY OF ACTS CHAPTER ELEVEN
In Judea, word gets round the Jewish and Jesus-sect followers that Peter is converting Gentiles to the new religion in Joppa, on the Israel – Egypt borders.
While Peter’s flock grows due to the number of gentiles swelling the ranks, the new creed is also growing elsewhere, including Cyprus and Antioch, where only Jews are being converted to the new faith for the time being. The evangelists are reluctant to follow Peter’s example and open the religion to all.
God changes this attitude directly by touching them all with the Holy Ghost, signalling an opening of the floodgates.
Barnabus sets out to help the Apostles and other evangelists in controlling the swelling ranks of the infant Church, and decides to find Saul in Tarsus. The men meet and go together to Antioch, where Acts records the first instant in which the followers of the supposedly resurrected Jesus were first openly referred to as ‘Christians’. (V.26).
In Antioch, a Christian called Anabus predicts problems arising soon. We are told that this was during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius.
When Judea suffers from a famine, Saul ad Barnabus organize a relief and aid programme, though it is unstated if this is exclusively for followers of Christianity or available to unbelievers too.
We see little at this stage of the attitude of the Sadducees to the influx of Gentiles to the formerly Jewish religion. The Sadducees were threatened by the cult the, so seeing its numbers inflamed by a potential to convert virtually anybody on the planet must have may well have given them great cause for concern. While Christianity itself was a Jewish sect, there was relatively little anti-Semitism, but with the Jewish voices now drowned out by those of other people, Egyptians, Samarians, Romans, etc, the tide was turning against the Jews with some venom, and the Jews were threatened all the more for their apparent role in the trials and execution by crucifixion of Jesus.
Labelling the new religion Christianity separated it forever from its roots. Many would simply discard any evidence that Jesus had ever been Jewish, but if he existed at all, he was.
Arthur Chappell
