Acts chapter 11

vs 1

Good news travels fast, it would seem! But did they see it as good news?

vs 2-3

Apparently not. They didn't care that God had done something miraculous, all they cared about where the precepts of the law which hadn't been followed regarding someone's willy.

Remember, these aren't the believers of some outlying town - these are whoever was left in Jerusalem! That could suggest even the apostles.

vs 4

This won't sound repetitive at all...

vs 5-10

Now we see the story from Peter's side. For him, the whole things starts with the vision of a sheet.

What more can I say? This stuff is pretty much verbatim from the story earlier. So why is it repeated? Because we must remember that Bible narratives were written for people to listen to, not just read. Most people didn't read, because of the need to be taught, and also because of the expense of writing materials.

And so the repetition ensures that this story will be remembered. But why should it be? I mean, it's obvious verbatim repetition so close together (twice for Peter, twice for Cornelius) can only mean that Luke thought this event was important enough to repeat. And it is! Unfortunately for us, this uniting of faith between Jew and gentile is so old that it's old news to us, and we don't realise just how earth-shattering it was to the people of the time.

I think the next big social trend of this size and impact was probably the statement that there is less diversity of mental ability and social value than we thought between races.

I guess the only thing I can think of that would create as much of a stir is if someone said that there's no difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals. But then, that would really only stir up more conservative people, I think. Probably a lot of people in the western world don't think of that as a moral line drawn along similar lines to the Jew/Gentile split.