Welcome to the Neckit Bible Podcast Episode 52, Act 16 and 17.

I'm your layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser, am I a kid?

Good, glad to be back again.

Yeah, absolutely. We got two chapters this week.

Yeah, we do. I'm not going to read through the full chapters of both, or read through most of

most of what's there, but again, just picking out a few things that are kind of interesting,

at least to me anyway, and hopefully to listeners that pop up in these two chapters.

So let's just jump in. We have Act 16. We'll just start reading at the top. Paul came also to

Derby and to Listera. A disciple was there named Timothy. So here we get our first introduction to

Timothy. The son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. He was well

spoken of by the brothers at Listera and Iconium. Again, these were the places where Paul had run into

all sorts of trouble. Of course, he had been stoned. We talked about that last time. Paul wanted

Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those

places. For they all knew that his father was a Greek. Now, again, if you think back to last time,

the Act 15 situation where the Jerusalem Council had to meet and what burdens do we put on Gentile

believers and whatnot, circumcision was not one of those. It was very clear in terms of the decision

that Gentile converts don't have to become Jews to be saved. But Paul nevertheless, because of,

again, really, I think that the place is that Timothy is associated with Listera and Iconium where he

had so much trouble. He does circumcise Timothy. Again, he had not undergone circumcision. The

passage doesn't say anything about that this resulted in him being a believer or accepted by the

disciples. It actually says both of those things prior to his circumcision. He was a disciple,

verse 1 says. He's a believer. Son of a Jewish woman who was a believer well spoken of by the

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