Eyes Above The Waves

Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker.

Friday 25 March 2005

The Great U-Turn

The Herald published Newsweek's annual story about Easter. As usual it tries to please every side ... strange considering what happened on Easter is really the most divisive issue in the universe. But it does raise one of the great questions: how did the disciples recover from Jesus' death --- the apparent crushing of all their beliefs and hopes --- to become potent advocates of his resurrection and take the world by storm? The only credible answer, in my view, is that it really happened.

Comments

Adam
Wasn't 'taking the world by storm' down to Saul? After the Resurrection not much survives afterwards apart from James' work who eventually got undermined by Paul's branch of Christianity.
And wasn't all that a century or two afterwards anyway?
Robert O'Callahan
Paul was important, but he joined a movement, he didn't start it.
> And wasn't all that a century or two afterwards
> anyway?
Certainly not. Christians didn't lie low for a century, as you can see from Tacitus for example.
Adam
Hi Rob,
Looked about for Tacitus on the Wiki, but could find no mention of him w.r.t. Christianity - only this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Jesus
His bio on the same source suggests "and his obvious contempt for Judaism and Christianity (both troublesome foreign cults in the eyes of a first-century Roman aristocrat)"
I assume I'm looking at the wrong guy, this one is an historian.
Send me a link? I'm quite interested in early cloudy church history and how it formed the basis of what we have now.
Cheers,
A.
Robert O'Callahan
No, that's the one. Read Tacitus' Annals, it's a good read (although the mention of Christianity is very brief).
> Send me a link? I'm quite interested in early
> cloudy church history and how it formed the
> basis of what we have now.
I haven't read it myself yet, but this book comes very highly recommended:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0800636155/qid=1112932837/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-8939084-8932117?v=glance&s=books&n=507846