BI – 151 (SQ # 6)

What historical circumstances contributed to the origin of the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles?

I think there was some historical view for the Gospel and Pauling Epistle. Jesus himself gave the evidences from his teachings, healing. His instruction emphasized the new thought that success in the Kingdom comes through the pain and death of the King. He gave the requirements for kingdom citizens and the kind of service His disciples were to provide. On the basis of this message and previous teachings of Jesus, the disciple did not expect a prolonged period before His return. There are six data in the earliest from of the Gospel according to the text book. (1) Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, (2) with His coming, the Messianic prophecies have been fulfilled and the new age has dawned, (3) He is the promised descendant od David, and God’s approval of Him is manifest through His mighty works and wonders; (4) He was crucified, raised from the dead, and exalted to the right hand of God; (5) He will return to judge mankind and to consummate His Kingdom; and (6) salvation is by faith in His name.

An independently-written narrative of Paul's life and ministry, found in the Acts of the Apostles, is used to determine the date, and possible authorship, of Pauline letters by locating their origin within the context of his life. For example, Paul mentions that he is a prisoner in his Epistle to Philemon 1:7; based on this statement, J. A. T. Robinson argued that this captivity was Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea, while W. M. Ramsay identified this as Paul’s captivity in Rome, while others have placed the captivity in Ephesus. One difficulty with this position is the limited data available on Paul's historical setting, and this is especially true with the conclusion of the narrative of Acts prior to Paul's death. It also assumes that the book of Acts was written by an actual traveling companion of Paul's. However, as A.N. Sherwin-White has noted, in travel romance literature of this period, it was a normal literary convention to use the first-person plural while characters were on a shipboard voyage, and "we" passages in Acts coincide with such voyages.