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Visit to shop from Bart Ehrman’s online courses and get a special discount by using code: MJPODCAST on all courses. We start learning about the Christian movement with the letters of Paul, around the year 60, about 30 years after Jesus' death. But what was happening during its very first year? The Book of Acts, written decades after Paul, describes key events, but can we rely on its account as historical? If not, what can we infer from our various sources? What was actually happening in those years? Were thousands of people converting? Was the religion taking over the world? Was it declared illegal by the state? Or... ? This week, Megan asks Bart about: -What sources, if any, do we have for the very earliest days of Christianity? -When was the book of Acts written, and how reliable a witness does it provide for the first year after Jesus’ death? -Did the disciples stay in Jerusalem following Jesus’ crucifixion, or return to their homes in Galilee? -Would the conversion of Gentiles have started yet, or would the group have been predominantly Jewish, still? -Do we know what the followers of Jesus may have said to convert others to their beliefs? -One year on, how many Christians can we estimate there to have been? -Do we know how many of the disciples came to believe in his resurrection, and how quickly that belief formed after his death? -How plausible is it that the disciples would think that the man they had spent the last months or years with, and had watched die, was actually god? -What do we know about the leadership of the group following Jesus’ death? -Do we know what their relationship was like with groups of authority - both the Jewish leadership, and the Roman empire? Would they have been seen as a threat? -How do you explain how a small group of illiterate, rural peasants could lay the groundwork for a religion that would ultimately take over the empire? Had this already started by the end of the first year?
