Evidence & Paul's Journeys
An historical investigation into the travels of the apostle Paul
By Jefferson White, Parsagard Press 2001
One of the most important questions we can ever ask is whether the Good News of Jesus Christ is historically true. The cover blurb for 'Evidence & Paul's Journeys' says:
Because the events recorded in the New Testament occurred almost two thousand years ago, most people assume that it is no longer possible to decide the question of historical truth.
But this assumption is false. A great deal of circumstantial evidence has survived the centuries. The Acts account of the Apostle Paul's journeys contains hundreds of statements that can be judged as true or false in light of evidence that is completely independent of the New Testament record.
Most people - even most Christians - are unaware of the persuasiveness of this evidence...
The purpose of this book is to look at just how persuasive the evidence is in one particular area - the travels of the Apostle Paul, as they are recorded in the New Testament book of Acts, and also as incidental light is thrown on them by comments in Paul's letters.
White writes:
According to the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul travelled in the eastern Roman empire for more than a dozen years, preaching and teaching. Luke, whom tradition names as the author of Acts, provides us with a complex and detailed narrative of those journeys. Luke tells us about local political boundaries and titles. He describes the social characteristics of cities and provinces. He tells us about the distances travelled on land and on sea, and reveals how long it took to cover those distances. He describes Paul's arrests and trials, and details legal maneuvrings in different jurisdictions. He tells of Paul's dealings with individuals who also appear in pagan and Jewish historical sources.
Indeed, Luke is astonishingly accurate when recording the political, social, and legal details of the cities and provinces of the eastern Roman empire. His accuracy becomes even more impressive when we discover that many of those details were true only in the middle decades of the first century, the era of Paul's travels. (Page 2)
He goes on to say:
Most books written for the general reader on the subject of biblical evidence tend to be superficial in their examination of that evidence. Even the best of such studies barely scratch the surface. In part, this is due to an assumption that the evidence is too technical, or too involved, for the average reader to follow. In part it is due to a bias that regards scholarly specialists as being the only people who can properly understand and weigh the evidence. Neither of these propositions is true. (page 4)
White describes the archaeological evidence for Sergius Paulus, the governor, or proconsul, of Cyprus (page 11), for Gallio, the proconsul of the Roman province of Achaia (page 33), for Erastus, the city treasurer of Corinth (page 38), for Demetrius, the silversmith of Ephesus (page 40), for the Asiarchs who governed Ephesus (page 41), and for the temple barrier in Jerusalem (page 47).
He also describes how the Acts account of Paul's arrest in Jerusalem, and subsequent trials at Caesarea fit in with the known facts of history, and he concludes:
Throughout the narrative of Paul's Judean arrest and trial, Luke refers to a number of people and events whose existence and relationships are confirmed by the secular histories of the time. (page 63)
White has a detailed chapter describing the nautical evidence relating to Paul's shipwreck on Malta (pages 66-82). Read this chapter online.
He also deals in depth with the problem of reconciling Luke's account of Paul's travels in Acts with Paul's own account of his movements in Galatians chapter 2 - one of the most notorious problems of New Testament scholarship.
White's overall conclusion (on page 134) is that:
The Acts account of Paul's journeys is as reliable as we may expect history to be. So far as it can be tested by objective evidence, Acts has proved to be an astonishingly accurate record of events.
'Evidence & Paul's Journeys' is highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the reliability of the historical accounts in the New Testament.
Jefferson White is a computer consultant living in Columbus, Ohio. He has been interested in the relationship between evidence and Paul's journeys for more than twenty years.
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