Cornelius was a very devout guy. He was visited by an angel and told to send some guys to get Simon who is called Peter. So he sent some guys.
I've never understood the whole "Simon who is called Peter" thing. Why not just say Peter?
Peter's Vision
Peter went to the roof to pray and got hungry. Then he had a vision that a great sheet descended on the earth from heaven with all manner of animal in it. A voice told him to kill and eat, but he said he can't eat some of those things. The voice said it is okay to eat it.
So is this basically throwing away kosher laws? What about the whole "not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished"?
Peter met up with Cornelius' guys and they traveled back to meet Cornelius. When they got there Cornelius asked Peter to share all that he had heard from the lord.
Gentiles Hear the Good News
Peter said that God shows no partiality but is happy with any nation that "fears him and does what is right and acceptable to him"
Maybe this is just on my mind from reading it on other blogs recently, but this sounds a hell of a lot like subjective morality to me.
Peter tells the story of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit Falls on the Gentiles
The holy spirit poured out on everyone who was listening. They crowd was speaking in tongues and Peter said that they should all be baptized.
This sounds really strange to me. Everyone who was listening just gets the holy spirit? They don't have to accept Jesus or form a personal relationship or anything? It's just that anyone who was lucky enough to be there gets it.
"So is this basically throwing away kosher laws? What about the whole "not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished"?
ReplyDeleteI think the more NT books you read, the more apparent it becomes that each book was written by someone with a particular agenda or take on things.
The only thing I'd want to highlight is yet another example of Peter blaming the Jews for what happened to Jesus.
Yeah, I think you are right about the different books.
DeleteI've been trying to avoid the angle about Peter blaming the Jews for things. I could be totally wrong on this, but it seems to me that the early Christians were all Jews who at some point accepted Christ. So when Peter says "Jews" it's more that he is saying "people in our group who haven't accepted Jesus" than he is saying "that group of people over there".
I think someone could read Acts and have a takeaway that it is anti-Jewish. I think those people would be wrong. Again, I don't know the history very well so I could be way off, but this is how it reads to me.
Whether or not it was intended that way, some of the books of the Bible have been used historically to justify a lot of antisemitism. You can do a quick google of "acts of the apostles and antisemitism" and come up with a lot of stuff. Doing a quick skim of a few articles, it seems like the Acts, as a whole, depicts the persecution of the Christians by the Jews. I know wiki isn't the best source, but this page has some interesting things on Acts. To my understanding (I'm no historical scholar) but these kinds of attitudes lead to establishment of Jewish Ghettos in Europe, long before World War II. Noted in that article is even Pope Paul IV in 1555 created a Jewish Ghetto in Rome that was around for a little over three hundred years. The Catholics weren't the only ones at fault. Martin Luther's On the Jews and their Lies, which I think I had linked earlier, uses a lot of biblical passages to support his "antiJew" (sic) message. In my opinion, this long running attitude toward Jews in Europe didn't make it very hard for Hitler to drum up support.
DeleteAnyway, that's most of what I "know" on that subject.
I should add that it seems like you could go either way.. but using it as justification for some unforgivable things against the Jews, did happen. My slant is kind of one sided, but that's where I stand at the moment.
DeleteI think the problem with religion, is as you pointed out before, (sic) is that you don't need it to do good things, but you can use it to do some bad stuff.