misterjingo

I lurk here quite a bit and have come up with a question regardin Acts. In school many moons ago I was under the impression that scholars could look at Acts and find kernels of historical events that took place. Of course this was also said of the gospels. Have any of the events in Acts been corroborated by sources outside the Bible i.e. "neutral" sources?

Toto

Short answer: no. Some of the historical background in Acts correlates with known history - officials are named who have been verified from secular historians or monuments. (And some cannot be fit into the known history.) But the actual events cannot be verified. There is no mention of Paul outside of Christian sacred writings, no record of his travels.

In addition, many of the events have a supernatural or obvious fictional angle to them - an angel gets Peter out of prison, a convenient earthquake gets Paul out of prison.

You will find some old threads on this topic.

Peter Kirby

What are the examples of events or officials in Acts that cannot be fit into known history?

best,
Peter Kirby

Chris Weimer

I advise everyone to first read Richard Carrier's book review of Luke and Josephus.

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...djosephus.html