Evidence and Paul's Journeys

Rating:
Summary: Excellent adventures
Review: I love history because I love stories, and the Acts of the Apostles is filled with wonderful stories. But Luke's narrative tone is a bit prosaic, and the familiarity wrought by frequent rereading can take the edge off the excitement of the events Luke describes.

"Evidence and Paul's Journeys" brings the excitement back. As he corroborates detail after detail of Paul's missionary journeys, Mr. White casts a raking light on the excitement and drama of Paul's travels and brings them into sharper relief.

All Christians recognize St. Paul's importance in shaping the early church and in spreading the Gospel well beyond its earliest boundaries. But I for one was only dimly aware of the sheer drama of his life. What adventures he had! Arrests and trials, torture, shipwrecks, preaching before cheering throngs and reviled by angry mobs, encounters with fascinating people from all walks of life and of countless ethnic backgrounds (was Paul the first multiculturalist?). All Paul's adventures and encounters are here, placed solidly within their social and historical context so that Paul's great courage and faith shine forth.

"Evidence and Paul's Journeys" will send you back to Acts with fresh eyes, able to appreciate once again the power of the wonderful stories Luke tells.

Rating:
Summary: Great Insight
Review: I loved this book. The insight it offers is second to none. If you are, like me, a fan of the Paul, buy this book!

Rating:
Summary: Ideal for personal and small group New Testament studies
Review: Jefferson White's Evidence & Paul's Journeys: An Historical Investigation Into The Travels Of The Apostle Paul is a comprehensive guide and a fascinating survey to Paul's travels for the purpose of spreading the message that the Messiah had arrived and his name was Jesus. Written specifically for the non-specialist general reader, Evidence & Paul's Journeys is a compelte and detailed examination of the historical evidence for Paul's journeys and related activities in founding and advising Christian communities. Very highly recommended for personal, small group, and parochial school studies, each evidential point presented in Evidence & Paul's Journeys is scrupulously footnoted to a comprehensive and scholarly appendix that aptly serves as a basis for further study making it ideal for personal and small group New Testament studies.

Rating:
Summary: Ideal for personal and small group New Testament studies
Review: Jefferson White's Evidence & Paul's Journeys: An Historical Investigation Into The Travels Of The Apostle Paul is a comprehensive guide and a fascinating survey to Paul's travels for the purpose of spreading the message that the Messiah had arrived and his name was Jesus. Written specifically for the non-specialist general reader, Evidence & Paul's Journeys is a compelte and detailed examination of the historical evidence for Paul's journeys and related activities in founding and advising Christian communities. Very highly recommended for personal, small group, and parochial school studies, each evidential point presented in Evidence & Paul's Journeys is scrupulously footnoted to a comprehensive and scholarly appendix that aptly serves as a basis for further study making it ideal for personal and small group New Testament studies.

Rating:
Summary: Evidence in bite-sized chunks...
Review: The majority of this book deals with Acts. The author breaks all the evidence therein down into bite-sized chunks and deals with each piece in a straightforward and no nonsense fashion while following a self-imposed rule that "a contradiction cannot be proved if there is a reasonable explanation for it" (p. 118). This rightfully narrows the field of contradictions down to a scant few and warrants the author's assertion 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 proven to be an astonishingly accurate record of events" (p. 134). All of this evidence eventually points to "one of the most striking aspects of the Acts record" which is how many of the details "belong to the middle of the first century, and to that era alone" (p. 132).

He also deals with empirical evidence regarding 1 and 2 Corinthians and states: "If Paul had not written a second letter to Corinth, or if that letter had been lost to history, the travel plans that he outlines in the first Corinthian letter would contradict Luke's account of his movements in the third journey" (p. 88). We can apply this same logic to the perceived contradictions elsewhere and wonder if they wouldn't be just as easily cleared up if there were more manuscripts extant relating to that time--we shouldn't look askance at the Biblical narrative because it has a remarkable track record but question our limited understanding of that particular time.

Easy writing style that won't leave you exhausted; nicely done.
--Moza