THE BOOK OF ACTS
PREPARATION FOR LESSON 1

In preparation for this lesson, you should read quickly over the complete Book of Acts. Note clues to authorship, date, audience, and background.

Then read chapter 2 of Acts, and write down key points from Peter's speech.

This lesson has three sections.

Authorship
Historical Setting
Theological Background

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF LESSON 1

GOALS

In this lesson, we would like to accomplish the following:

1. We hope you will become more interested in the background of The Book of Acts.

2. We hope you will use the resources of this lesson to learn the key information about the background of The Book of Acts.

3. We hope you begin to apply key teachings from The Book of Acts to your own life.

OBJECTIVES

When you have done the following, it will show that the goals are met:

1. Use all the resources and complete all the written assignments of the lesson, expressing your own thoughts and attitudes regarding the background of The Book of Acts.

2. Obtain a satisfactory grade on the test, demonstrating that you can identify key information related to the author, the date, the audience, and the historical context of The Book of Acts.

3. Answer the application questions in the study guides, showing how you apply the teachings of the lesson to your own life.

"Instructions for Lesson 1"

Carefully read these summarized instructions. You may want to print them out so that you can refer to them as you proceed through the assignments.

Tutorials

If this is your first time to study one of our lessons, you should read "General Instructions for Assignments." 

Note about Greek and Hebrew

Once in a while, the lectures of Third Millennium courses include words in Greek or Hebrew. Don't worry about this, because a knowledge of these languages is not necessary for the course. Furthermore, when a Greek or Hebrew word is used in a study guide, glossary, or quiz, it will be transliterated (using English letters). However, it may be helpful to at least look at the alphabet of these biblical languages and learn something about the way they are transliterated. If you are interested, you may look at the following resources:

For Greek, see the following PDF document:
Greek Alphabet

For Hebrew, you may look at the following web site called "Judaism 101"
http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm

Glossary

Each lesson has a glossary of terms and names used in the lesson. You can find it in the "Resources" section of the lesson.