I am in the middle of a thread dealing with the New Testament book of Acts, the first account that we have of the history of the Christian church at its very beginnings – starting with the events happening right after the resurrection of Jesus and covering the spread of the Christian faith through the Roman world up until the time Paul reached the city of Rome, presumably in the early 60s CE.   And so this is an account of the first three decades of Christianity.   It’s the only one we have of this period.   That’s one reason it is so important to know if it’s historically reliable or not – if it’s not, we have very restricted access to what was happening in these most critical years of the early Christian movement. Before I discuss the issue of Acts’ historically reliability (the subject of my debate with myself in front of my class two weeks ago), I need to provide a bit more background.   In my textbook on the New Testament I provide two [...]