Lecture 5: Paul and Christianity’s First Expansion

Paul and Christianity’s First Expansion

Lecture 5

I

n the last lecture, we saw that the experience of power, even if from an

unlikely source, was the distinctive claim made by the first believers.

This power was not political, economic, or military but religious.

The first believers claimed that they were touched by God through the

Resurrection of Jesus. The persuasiveness of this claim to themselves and

others must be the key to understanding how a failed messianic movement

made its presence felt across the Mediterranean world within decades and

with no other visible means of support. In this lecture, we’ll look at the rapid

and mostly spontaneous spread of Christianity across the western empire

from 30 to 70 C.E.

The Acts of the Apostles

•    The Acts of the Apostles was written circa 85 C.E. as the second

volume of the Gospel of Luke, but it describes events from 30 to

62. It is the indispensable if also limited narrative account of the
    first expansion of Christianity.

•    Despite its obvious bias (it sees the movement as directed by God’s

Holy Spirit), Acts is, by the standards of ancient historiography,

reasonably reliable, given that it traces the stages of Christianity’s

expansion from Jerusalem to Rome.

o As archaeology and other ancient literature confirm, Acts gets

its world right in considerable detail, including dates, local

leaders, and political processes.

o Where it is possible to check Acts against other information,

such as Paul’s letters—which to some extent overlap Acts

16–20—Acts gets the basic facts about the movement right,

as well.

•    The limits of Acts as a historical source are also real, requiring a

careful and critical use of its narrative.