The Apostles (Elgar) The Apostles (Elgar) The Apostles, Op. 49, is an oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar. It was first performed on 14 October 1903. After his international success with the "Enigma Variations" (1899) and "The Dream of Gerontius "(1900), Elgar was commissioned by the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which had also produced "Gerontius", to write a new choral work. This encouraged Elgar to start composing a large-scale work on a subject he had been contemplating, according to the composer, since boyhood when he had even started selecting the words. "The Apostles", like its successor "The Kingdom", depicts
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles the origins of Christianity are the "Antiquities of the Jews" by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, and the "Church History" of Eusebius. Josephus and Luke-Acts are thought to be approximately contemporaneous, around AD 90, and Eusebius wrote some two and a quarter centuries later. Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles The historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles, the principal historical source for the Apostolic Age, is of interest for biblical scholars and historians of Early Christianity as part of the debate over the historicity of the Bible. Archaeological inscriptions and other independent sources show that Acts contains