Baidarka

Another thread dealing with this issue



Muhwezi said some cult members -- who had been asked to sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the church -- had apparently demanded their money back when a prediction the world would end on December 31, 1999 failed to come true.

''When nothing happened on the 31st it appeared they (the cult's leaders) had a problem,'' he said.

The solution appeared to have been to kill unruly cult members. There were 59 children in the three graves in Buhunga, including the body of a two-year-old. ''When they killed the mothers it goes without saying that they had to kill the children as well,'' Muhwezi said.
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/m08.html

Possibilities about the Murder in Acts

1- The story is a complete fabrication created to scare members of the cult into complete submission.
2- After the natural deaths of two cult members their double dealing shenanigans were discovered and it was decided that God gave them what they deserved.
3- After joining the cult the couple tried to back out, demanded their money back and were murdered. This story was concocted to explain their deaths.

http://www.gbs.sha.bw.schule.de/reign_of_fire.htm
http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/cults1.html

Thomas II

Chris,

You have to back up what you are saying...Luke against Peter? :huh:
The only thing would be that Luke was pro Mary Magdalene and other women and Peter was not...
Luke was a doctor and the acts were addressed to a Roman official, so I doubt that he would lie in any way. I would say that he would be trying to be factual,if anything...
Anger was an issue with Peter and his Galilean background...
He was thickheaded too...
And he had a shame issue with lying...He had lied saying he did not know Jesus...And Jesus had told him so...Oh,the shame...
He connected Ananias lie to lying to the Holy Spirit and that made Ananias lie unforgivable. Death was the only way out...As you can read in the link to New Advent posted on June 24, the Levites were ready to fulfill his order to execute Ananias and then Sapphira...

Thomas II

I want to make clear that the motivation for these posts is to find the truth,
not just about Jesus,and Peter,Paul,the Gospels,but about anything and everything related to religion...
Why?
Because I am tired of accepting whatever they say without looking further into it. Every time I have done so I have found a much deeper truth and a better understanding of what this religion is all about...I've had enough of the polished image...As much as possible I want facts, whatever they are.

Amaleq13

Yes, as a continuation of Paul against Peter. This makes sense whether you assume the author was actually a companion of Paul's or just sympathetic to Paul's efforts.

Thomas II

I see what you mean...
So you think that Luke was trying to make Peter look bad?
Any other place were you see that in the Acts or in his Gospel?
What if Luke was simply exposing the way Peter really was?
Is there any sign of criticism of Paul in Acts or in Luke's Gospel, something that would show that Luke was actually being impartial?

Amaleq13

No, I was just trying to clear up what I understood Christ to be saying. Among the Gospels, I think Mark makes Peter look the worst. I tend to think of ALuke as trying to reconcile the two into appearing as one happy family in Acts. With regard to Mark, it is difficult for me to believe that Peter (or the other discipes) could have been as dense as the author describes them. It suggests to me a message intended to address the doubts of a much later Christian community rather than a description of "what really happened".

While that is certainly possible, I don't know how we might determine what is the creation of the author's imagination and what is "history". Frankly, I find that to be the case for the entire Gospels/Acts collection.

Many scholars have noted that the depiction of Paul in Acts differs from the depiction of Paul obtained from his letters. You can find several commentaries discussing this at Peter Kirby's website. I don't think of ALuke as "impartial" so much as primarily intent on creating the appearance of more agreement between Paul and the Jerusalem group (Peter specifically) than is described in Paul's letters.

Thomas II

...Which would benefit Paul since he is the one going out on a limb...

Chris Weimer

Luke was never really "Luke" - the companion of Paul - but the name we give the unknown creator of the Kata Luke, Acts, and quite possibly the Pastorals. It seems that the set of writings, if not by one person then by one group, some sort of sect of Christianity, who were not primarily trying to reconcile Jewish and Christian relationships but instead promoting their brand of Christianity, which so far I've only solidly deduced that they were povertists. If indeed the authors of Luke-Acts-Pastorals saw themselves as a continuation of Paul, then they would indeed try to demonise Peter, who according to church history opposed Paul. Luke quite efficiently did away with Peter's prominence, and the Roman church eventually adopted the New Peter based off of Acts.