The Spirit of truth is Baha'u'llah who brought the Holy Spirit to humanity in the last days.
The Father sent the Holy Spirit to the disciples on the day of Pentecost.
Acts 2 King James Version (KJV)
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Wow, so many thing wrong here.
1) massive confirmation bias, the word Baha’u’llah isn't said or any names remotely close to the fact.
but it gets worse.....
The Father sent the Holy Spirit to Baha'u'llah in the last days.
Acts 2:16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;
Acts 2:17-21And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Acts 2:17-21 is a prophecy and it has been fulfilled by the coming of Baha’u’llah.
You are so blind with cognitive bias you can't see what is right in front of your eyes.
What visions? What dreams? What handmaiden prophecies?
What wonders in the heavens?
What sun turned to darkness?
When did the moon turn to blood?
NONE of those things happened. What actually happened is a man claimed revelations, nothing in the prophecy happened, zip.
But worse, Acts is the most fictive of all books in the Bible. It copies the common narratives that were popular in that time.
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Although it is implied in the preface of the book of
Acts that it is supposed to be some kind of historical account, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact,
Acts has been thoroughly discredited as nothing more than a work of apologetic historical fiction, and the scholarship of Richard Pervo conclusively demonstrates this to be the case. Regarding any historical sources that Luke may have used for
Acts, the only one that has been confirmed with any probability was that of Josephus (a person who never wrote about Jesus Christ nor Christianity, yet was likely used by Luke for background material), and although there may have been more historical sources than Josephus, we simply don’t have any evidence preserved from those other possible historians to make a case one way or the other. All of the other sources that we can discern within
Acts are literary sources, not historical ones. Included in these literary sources is what may possibly have been a (now-lost) hagiographical fabrication, and basically a rewrite of the Elijah-Elisha narrative in some of the Old Testament (OT) texts of
Kings, although placing Paul and Jesus in the main roles instead, which obviously would have been a literary source of historical fiction (not any kind of historical account).
The scholar Thomas Brodie has argued that this evident reworking of the
Kings narrative starts in Luke’s Gospel and continues on until
Acts chapter 15, thus indicating that Luke either integrated this literary creation into his story or he used an underlying source text, such as some previous Gospel that not only covered the acts of Jesus but also the acts of the apostles. So it appears that Luke either used this source text or his own literary idea and then inserted more stories into it, effectively expanding the whole story into two books, while also utilizing some material from Mark and Matthew during the process (and potentially other now-lost Gospels) and some material from the epistles of Paul. In any case, the unnamed source text mentioned thus far is a hypothetical one that can only be inferred to have existed from the evidence of what’s written in
Acts. Luckily, the remaining literary sources that scholars can discern Luke used are indeed sources we actually have and thus can directly compare to and analyze.
As an example, the scholar Dennis MacDonald has shown that Luke also reworked fictional tales written by Homer, replacing the characters and some of the outcomes as needed to suit his literary purposes. MacDonald informs us in his
The Shipwrecks of Odysseus and Paul (New Testament Studies, 45, pp. 88-107) that:
“The shipwrecks of Odysseus and Paul share nautical images and vocabulary, the appearance of a goddess or angel assuring safety, the riding of planks, the arrival of the hero on an island among hospitable strangers, the mistaking of the hero as a god, and the sending of him on his way [in a new ship].“
Paul actually tells us himself that he was shipwrecked three times, and that at least one time he spent a day and night adrift (
2 Cor. 11.25). It’s possible that Luke was inspired by this detail given by Paul and used it to invent a story that expanded on it, while borrowing other ideas and details from famous shipwreck narratives including those found in
Jonah, the
Odyssey, and the
Aeneid. In fact,
Acts rewrites Homer a number of other times. Paul’s resurrection of the fallen Eutychus was based on the fallen Elpenor. The visions of Cornelius and Peter were constructed from a similar narrative that was written about Agamemnon. Paul’s farewell at Miletus was made from Hector’s farewell to Andromache. The lottery of Matthias we hear about was built off of the lottery of Ajax. Even Peter’s escape from prison was lifted from Priam’s escape from Achilles. There are other literary sources besides Homer that the author of
Acts used as well. For example, the prison breaks in
Acts share several themes with the famously miraculous prison breaks found in the
Bacchae of Euripedes such as the miraculous unlocking of chains and being able to escape due to an earthquake (compare
Acts 12.6-7 and 16.26 to
Bacchae pp. 440-49, 585-94)........................
As we can see, in order for
Acts to be any kind of history, one would have to assume that all of these parallels are merely historical coincidences which is orders of magnitude less probable than that they are simply inventions that were intentionally created to reflect one another. It’s certainly possible for a couple of these coincidences to be historical, but it is nigh impossible for all of them to be historical. Either way, there isn’t any way to weed out any of the possible historical details from within this plethora of fictional constructions. Overall,
Acts just shares far too many features with popular adventure novels that were written during the same period, in order to lend it any trust as history. Here’s an overview of those features:
1) They all promote a particular god or religion.
2) They are all travel narratives.
3) They all involve miraculous or amazing events.
4) They all include encounters with fabulous or exotic people.
5) They often incorporate a theme of chaste couples that are separated and then reunited.
6) They all feature exciting narratives of captivities and escapes.
7) They often include themes of persecution.
8) They often include episodes involving excited crowds.
9) They often involve divine rescues from danger.
10) They often have divine revelations which are integral to the plot
Since
Acts shares all of these features and thus looks exactly like an ancient novel of the period, there is simply no good reason to assume that all of the parallels it has with other literary sources are merely historical coincidences. Rather, we should conclude that they are in fact what they have been shown to be: literary constructs and other elements of fiction.
More examples here:
Previously, I wrote a series of posts that mentioned several elements from Richard Carrier’s historical/literary analysis of the Gospels in the New Testament (showing that they are not histor…
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Acts is fiction.
