I found that the period of Christian history following the end of the book of Acts was one of the most important that I was unfamiliar with. I was familiar with the story of the gospels and the events of Acts, but not with the apostles' missions outside of what was narrated. Revelation is a mysterious book, full of symbols like the number of the beast that probably refers to Nero or Caligula because of its numerology (in ancient Greek, each letter had a number value). Also, I know that Constantine legalized Christianity in the 4th century AD, but it's curious and interesting for me to learn about what the church was like in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, in the time when the apostles, the Christians who knew them, and those who knew those Christians lived (the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation of Christians).
I searched for and watched all the movies that I could find on the 12 Apostles, the writing of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, and the early Church, and want to share them with you. Most can be found free online. I am listing the movies on the 12 apostles below, along with questions that I had while watching them. I welcome you to list any movies that I've missed.
The Apostles (Kultur, 2001/2003, 4 hours, available in some libraries)
The Apostles (Neofit studios, in Russian, Directed by Konstantin Valenchik, 12-video Series, 2014)
The Apostles: 12 Ordinary Men (2005)
The Beloved Disciple (Naked Archeologist series)
Deadly Journeys of the Apostles (Four-part series: From the Holy Land to Africa ; Travelers to the East; Jerusalem to The North ; Messengers to the West)
The Disciples (BBC Bible Mysteries Series)
Secret Lives of the Apostles (National Geographic)
The Secrets of the Twelve Disciples (Directed by David Batty, narrated by Robert Beckford, Channel 4)
1. In The Apostles: 12 Ordinary Men, Prof. Gary Habermas says that many people, like Jihadists, are willing to die for a belief or ideology that they have. He says that the apostles were willing to risk death for their factual claims about Jesus' appearances, so therefore they must have sincerely believed their claims of seeing Jesus. I think that Habermas is making a good argument. The apostles certainly claimed to have seen Jesus after the resurrection, singly or in groups, as Paul tells the Corinthians. They risked imprisonment and death, with scripture recording Stephen's death for his faith. And certainly, a person is far more likely to risk death for the sake of a claim about an experience they believe they had than for one that they believe that they didn't.
I have difficulty finding cases of other religious groups risking severe persecution for claims of supernatural visions that they supposedly witnessed themselves that would exactly match all the same elements of the argument that Habermas is making to prove the apostles' veracity. There are cases of modern day charismatics imagining or making up "visions", and some Charismatics are quite fervent, and have gone to preach in dangerous 3rd world countries. But how many instances do we know wherein modern Charismatics have risked death for their claims of visions?
2. In Secret Lives Of The Apostles, the video at 33:00 portrays Paul's eating with gentile converts, and talks about the apostles telling Peter not to eat with Paul's gentile friends. This is in Galatians 2:
It's strange- James ends up taking a possibly opposite position in Acts at the council of Jerusalem. In Galatians 2, James demands that the gentiles be circumcised before eating with them, but in Acts, at the council James decided uncircumcised Christians were legitimate and saved.
3. In the Russian documentary on Luke (2014), Andrey Desnitsky says that the apostle himself must have been one of the two travelers on the road to Emmaus who saw Jesus, since the author only names one of the two travelers, and it was written as if by an eyewitness. What do you think?
I searched for and watched all the movies that I could find on the 12 Apostles, the writing of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, and the early Church, and want to share them with you. Most can be found free online. I am listing the movies on the 12 apostles below, along with questions that I had while watching them. I welcome you to list any movies that I've missed.
Movies on the Twelve Apostles
The 12 Apostles (History Channel)
The Apostles (Kultur, 2001/2003, 4 hours, available in some libraries)
The Apostles (Neofit studios, in Russian, Directed by Konstantin Valenchik, 12-video Series, 2014)
The Apostles: 12 Ordinary Men (2005)
The Beloved Disciple (Naked Archeologist series)
Deadly Journeys of the Apostles (Four-part series: From the Holy Land to Africa ; Travelers to the East; Jerusalem to The North ; Messengers to the West)
The Disciples (BBC Bible Mysteries Series)
Secret Lives of the Apostles (National Geographic)
The Secrets of the Twelve Disciples (Directed by David Batty, narrated by Robert Beckford, Channel 4)
Questions after viewing:
1. In The Apostles: 12 Ordinary Men, Prof. Gary Habermas says that many people, like Jihadists, are willing to die for a belief or ideology that they have. He says that the apostles were willing to risk death for their factual claims about Jesus' appearances, so therefore they must have sincerely believed their claims of seeing Jesus. I think that Habermas is making a good argument. The apostles certainly claimed to have seen Jesus after the resurrection, singly or in groups, as Paul tells the Corinthians. They risked imprisonment and death, with scripture recording Stephen's death for his faith. And certainly, a person is far more likely to risk death for the sake of a claim about an experience they believe they had than for one that they believe that they didn't.
I have difficulty finding cases of other religious groups risking severe persecution for claims of supernatural visions that they supposedly witnessed themselves that would exactly match all the same elements of the argument that Habermas is making to prove the apostles' veracity. There are cases of modern day charismatics imagining or making up "visions", and some Charismatics are quite fervent, and have gone to preach in dangerous 3rd world countries. But how many instances do we know wherein modern Charismatics have risked death for their claims of visions?
2. In Secret Lives Of The Apostles, the video at 33:00 portrays Paul's eating with gentile converts, and talks about the apostles telling Peter not to eat with Paul's gentile friends. This is in Galatians 2:
Was James practicing a kind of "Messianic Judaism" when it came to Halakha, following rabbinical rules on rituals like eating while still believing in the gospel's supernatural claims?
It's strange- James ends up taking a possibly opposite position in Acts at the council of Jerusalem. In Galatians 2, James demands that the gentiles be circumcised before eating with them, but in Acts, at the council James decided uncircumcised Christians were legitimate and saved.
3. In the Russian documentary on Luke (2014), Andrey Desnitsky says that the apostle himself must have been one of the two travelers on the road to Emmaus who saw Jesus, since the author only names one of the two travelers, and it was written as if by an eyewitness. What do you think?
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