Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 1
The great literary achievement of the last fifty years of New Testament scholarship was the discovery and the general solution of the synoptic problem. It is the task of this generation to translate these results into the language of the historian; to show how literary complexities and contradictions reveal the growth of thought and the rise of institutions. Though much remains to be done, the general outline can already be seen. It is becoming increasingly certain that Christianity in the first century achieved a synthesis between the Greco-Oriental and the Jewish religions in the Roman Empire. The preaching of repentance, and of the Kingdom of God begun by Jesus passed into the sacramental cult of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the details are complex and obscure. What were the exact elements in this synthesis? How was it effected?
The necessary preliminary to the investigation of these questions is the study of Acts, which therefore takes its natural place as the opening contribution to the Beginnings of Christianity. Whatever be the historian's judgment as to its value as a record, without it he would be compelled to wander without a guide in the trackless forest of conjecture as to the way in which the Church organised itself, and began its work. The investigator into Christian origins is fascinated by the problem presented in the early chapters, where it is the sole authority, and is forced to consider the actual character of the Christian faith at its outset. To understand this it is necessary to go far afield in order to gather material, which, though at first sight irrelevant, bears directly on the problem.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.