Julio

Yes, I agree with that! It would explain the absence of any word from the holy spirit, very conspicuous by saying nothing in the drama! Peter lied to those who "HEARD" the story being told. It is evident that the GREAT FEAR that came upon the church was the result of HEARING Peter and his bodyguards explaining the "punishment". Nobody actually saw anything. The church then went on applying moral lessons of stewardship to keep gathering a fortune "for the poor in Jerusalem"!
That is another horror in the tale: The poor in the church remained poor as always, leading Paul, years later, to organize a collection for them, the poor in Jehovah's capital of the New Kingdom!!!
Peter was a crook.

ksen

Was it a crime? I don't think so since they just fell over dead.

What lesson is supposed to be taught? Don't lie to God is probably a good one.

Julio

Wait a minute! Where does God say that Ananias lied to him?!... Peter also lied to Jesus several times and went scot-free! He said at one occasion that he would die with Jesus, and HOURS later was lying with all his teeth and swearing with coarse, uninspired expletives in front of ladies, that he did not know that christ [the very same one who HOURS earlier had said "I will give you the keys to bind & loose EVERYTHING YOU WANT". Luckily, Jesus NEVER gave him any keys, imagine!!]! Is that not a worse sin?!... Ananias had no time to repent, taking the story at face value! Not a second to think about his weakness. Is that god unfair?!... SURE!!! VERY, VERY UNFAIR INDEED!
Why not tell Ananias to piss off and go look for a more liberal church?!!!...
Are you trying, trying, trying, and trying to justify this crime in the "holy scriptures"?!...
Where do we hear Ananias speak a word in self-defense?
But what is more relevant in the fable is to ask WHO kept Ananias' money?!...
Did you notice that not a word is said about that side of the saga? WHO KEPT THE MONEY?!
Was it given to the poor? BLOOD MONEY?! Peter kept it?!!...
Why bury the man in less than THREE HOURS without contacting any family member or the wife?!!!... Was that the BEST way to start a church?!!!...
And so on, ad nauseam.
OK, I'm not cross at you. I'm just venting my spleen at "Pope Peter the First"! The BIGGEST crook in the whole NT!

rizdek

And here's an inspired anecdote to prove it. The whole thing was for a few to set themselves up as the leaders and get the flock to fleece themselves to provide for them.

Julio

Yes, well put!

Doug Shaver

Are you assuming that the story as it now exists is just a sanitized account of some event that actually happened?

Julio

Yes. Assuming Acts was produced a hundred years after Pentecost, the accretion content to the episode must be astonishing!

Doug Shaver

Accretion assumes an original core of fact. I am aware of no reason to assume there was any such core.

Julio

Yes, I go along with that, too. There is accretion all over the Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Apocalypses and more. What part is then acceptable? Maybe there was initially some minor conflict about money in the "Primitive Church" [very primitive indeed!] as it would be reasonable to admit, but as it went from "ear-to-mouth" it eventually arrived at its final, more convenient, reading, and with some fine tuning there we have it as canonical scripture to teach us FEAR of the God of love in matters of stewardship! That episode in Acts put me off about scriptural integrity ever since the very first time I read it some 40 years ago. Of course, the pastor at the time, being a clever cynic, offered some simplistic hermeneutics and off I went forever suspicious of him and others.

Doug Shaver

As history? None of it, as far as I'm concerned. There is no good evidence that any of the gospels or Acts was written within living memory of any possible witness. Their authors are unknown, and we know nothing about their sources or even whether they used any sources besides their own imaginations.

The notion that they must contain some residue, however scarce, of factual history looks to me like nothing but wishful thinking.