As I indicated yesterday, for the next few days I have decided to post the new “boxes” that I am including in the seventh edition of my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.  Since these are relatively short – most of them 300-400 words – I will be doing two-posts-a-day.  (I don’t want to combine two boxes into one post, since they are all on completely different topics from one another; but I want you to get your money’s worth on the blog and so don’t want to have very short posts each day.  So, two a day.)

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Another Glimpse into the Past

Box 5.1  Talking Dogs and Resurrected Slaves

 

When Christians were spreading their oral traditions, trying to convert pagans to the new faith, what did they say or do to convince them?   The apostle Paul indicates that his great miracles made all the difference, as he himself did “signs, wonders, and miracles” among his converts (2 Corinthians 12:12).   And in fact we have later oral traditions – highly legendary, to be sure – about the apostles and their great miraculous deeds.

One of the most intriguing involves the apostle Peter and a talking dog.   In the apocryphal set of tales called …

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