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A quarrel about widows, then a hearing

AD 34 is a reconstruction, not a record: Acts gives no year and no calendar date, and scholarly estimates run from 31/32 to about 34 depending largely on the assumed date of Jesus's crucifixion.

Acts says Stephen was one of seven men chosen after Greek-speaking believers complained that their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution; the apostles prayed and laid hands on them. Acts calls them the Seven and never uses the word deacon.

Opponents then instigated accusations concerning Moses, the law and the Temple. Stephen was brought before the Sanhedrin and delivered a speech reading Israelite history as a pattern of rejecting God's messengers.

Cloaks at the feet of Saul

When Stephen declared that he saw Jesus standing at God's right hand, his hearers rushed him, drove him outside Jerusalem and stoned him. The witnesses placed their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Stephen prayed for his attackers before he died. Acts says Saul approved the killing — it does not say he threw stones.

No verdict, no sentence, no date

Acts describes a mob-like rush and a stoning, but records no formal Sanhedrin verdict, no Roman authorization and no named executioner. Acts 6–8 is the only narrative source for the death, and some modern scholarship challenges its historicity or its literary shaping.

December 26, the Western feast day, is not Stephen's known date of death; the New Catholic Encyclopedia calls that date unknown, and Byzantine traditions generally commemorate him on December 27.

What Acts does date is the reaction: devout men buried Stephen, and a severe persecution of the Jerusalem community began that same day, scattering believers into Judea and Samaria.

The year 37 comes from a church, not a document

Syriac Orthodox tradition places Peter's preaching and the establishment of an apostolic see at Antioch at approximately 37. No contemporary source records a particular founding day.

The year is an approximate denominational tradition — not a date supplied by Acts, by Galatians, by Origen or by Eusebius.

Acts credits refugees from Cyprus and Cyrene

The earliest surviving account of the Antiochene community is Acts 11, and it gives the breakthrough to unnamed believers from Cyprus and Cyrene who preached to Greeks there — not to Peter.

Jerusalem then sent Barnabas, who later brought Saul from Tarsus. On that narrative, the community had already formed before Peter's documented visit to the city.

What Galatians actually says

Paul's letter to the Galatians independently puts Peter, called Cephas, in Antioch, where Paul says he publicly opposed him over withdrawal from meals with Gentiles. The letter does not call Peter the church's founder and does not date the visit.

The earliest identified source behind the later Petrine succession tradition is Origen, who called Ignatius the second bishop of Antioch after Peter. Modern analysis notes that this identifies Peter as an earlier leader, not explicitly as the community's founder.

Modern scholarship judges Peter's Antiochene episcopate historically implausible or unprovable, and notes contradictions in the later succession lists.

The night in the Praetorian camp

Caligula was assassinated in the imperial palace on 24 January 41 — Suetonius dates the killing to the ninth day before the Kalends of February.

Suetonius says a soldier found Claudius hiding behind curtains, hailed him emperor and took him to the Praetorian camp. Claudius spent the night there while the consuls, the Senate and the city cohorts occupied the Forum and the Capitol.

Fifteen thousand sesterces a man

The next day senatorial plans stalled amid disagreement while a crowd outside called for Claudius. He accepted the soldiers' oath and promised each man a donative.

Suetonius puts that donative at 15,000 sesterces per guardsman; Josephus gives 5,000 drachmas. Josephus also preserves competing versions of the night's negotiations — one emphasizing senatorial tribunes sent to Claudius, another giving Herod Agrippa a central role as intermediary.

The Senate had perhaps three thousand men

The modern De Imperatoribus Romanis account estimates the Senate-aligned force at three or four urban cohorts, perhaps 3,000 men. With its own troops deserting or plainly outmatched, the Senate capitulated.

Claudius was formally invested with the powers of the princeps on 25 January, in what Suetonius reckons as the fiftieth year of his life.

Within days he summoned the Senate, entered Rome under military escort and moved against the principal participants in Caligula's assassination.

A broken sandal, and a cobbler named Anianus

Coptic tradition assigns Mark the Evangelist's arrival in Alexandria and the beginning of his preaching there to 42 CE. It is an ecclesiastical tradition, not a contemporaneously documented event.

In the later Martyrdom of Mark tradition, his first Alexandrian encounter is with a cobbler named Anianus: the cobbler injures his hand repairing Mark's sandal, Mark heals him, preaches in his home, and eventually appoints him bishop.

42, 43, 43/44, 61

The Coptic Orthodox Church's own current historical account does not use 42. It favors approximately 43, summarizes the History of the Patriarchs as 43/44, and separately acknowledges a 61 dating.

The 42 and 43 entries are rival year labels for substantially the same foundation tradition, not two independently attested events.

What the earliest narrative supplies, and what the ground has not

The earliest surviving narrative cited for the foundation is Eusebius's early-fourth-century Church History, which says Mark was sent to Egypt, preached his written gospel and first established churches in Alexandria. Eusebius supplies no year and introduces the claim with "they say."

The Cambridge History of Christianity reports virtually no Egyptian Christian archaeological evidence datable before the fourth century, although Christian manuscripts there are attested from the second.

The year 40 is not where the traditions land

The 40 attached to this entry is not supported by the strongest traditions consulted. The official Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Patriarchate accounts both put Mark's arrival and the church's foundation at approximately 43.

Other traditions and reconstructions propose 43/44, 49, the 50s, or about 61. The Coptic calculation reaching 43/44 works from "the fifteenth year" after the Ascension.

Eusebius reports it as hearsay

The earliest explicit surviving witness is Eusebius, writing in the early fourth century. He says — using the cautious formula "they say" — that Mark was the first sent to Egypt, preached the gospel attributed to him, and established churches in Alexandria.

Eusebius does not call Mark "Patriarch." That is a later institutional title read back onto the account.

The silence of Alexandria's own theologians

Neither Clement nor Origen mentions Mark's connection with Alexandria — a silence that contributes to scholarly caution about the tradition.

Critical reference scholarship says when Christianity reached Alexandria is uncertain, and describes Mark's foundation as alleged rather than historically established. The arrival of Christianity in Egypt cannot be reduced securely to one person or one year.

Anchored to Claudius's third regnal year

The Coptic Orthodox Church's historical account dates Mark's arrival in Egypt to the third regnal year of Claudius — approximately 43 CE — and says he founded the Church of Alexandria in that year.

The same official account also reports a closely related 43/44 dating from the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, and acknowledges an alternative of 61. Even the traditional chronology is approximate.

One bishop, three priests, seven deacons

Within the Coptic foundation account the act was an ordination, not a proclamation. Mark consecrated Anianus as bishop and ordained three priests and seven deacons.

That is what the tradition means by a founded church at Alexandria: a working ministry with a designated successor.

"Pope" is a label applied backwards

Mark did not receive that title in 43. The official Coptic history says Heraclas was the first Alexandrian bishop given it, in the first half of the third century; Mark is numbered first only retrospectively.

Eusebius independently preserves the broad ecclesiastical tradition that Mark preached in Egypt and first established churches in Alexandria, but he neither dates it to 43 nor calls him Pope.

Modern historical work treats Mark's Alexandrian foundation as a hallowed tradition whose historical basis cannot presently be demonstrated.

Set apart during a fast

The 45 on this entry is one reconstruction among several; Acts supplies no calendar year for the departure at all.

What Acts does describe is a scene. Leaders of the Antioch church were worshipping and fasting when Barnabas and Saul were set apart for missionary work, and the community fasted, prayed, laid hands on them and sent them out.

Sixteen miles to the port, then Cyprus

Barnabas and Saul travelled from Antioch to its port at Seleucia — sixteen miles west, in the reference account — and sailed to Salamis on Cyprus, where they preached in Jewish synagogues.

John Mark went with them as an assistant. Acts names Barnabas first at the commissioning, and Cyprus was his homeland.

Which year, and whether it was a journey at all

One scholarly reconstruction places this organized mission to Cyprus and southern Galatia around 43–45, which makes 45 possible but not independently verified. Other reference chronologies date the same expedition approximately 46–49 or 47–49.

Paul's undisputed letters never describe the expedition as a discrete first missionary journey. A Cambridge treatment warns that the three grand journeys are an Acts-based literary framework and questions the historical reliability of the mapped tours.

47 is one date inside a range

A traditional reference chronology puts this journey at 47–49, which is what supports 47 as a departure year. Another scholarly reference describes the same expedition as widely dated approximately 46–49, and an earlier competing reconstruction gives roughly 43–45.

Acts itself dates neither the commissioning nor the departure.

Barnabas first, Saul second

Acts introduces the pair in that order: prophets and teachers at Antioch were worshipping and fasting when Barnabas and Saul were set apart for the work, and the community released them after further fasting, prayer and a laying-on of hands.

The narrative only begins calling Saul "Paul" once the party has crossed Cyprus to Paphos. Treating him as the unquestioned leader from the first moment reads later prominence backward.

Nor is this where his preaching starts: the sources place him working in Arabia, Damascus, Syria and Cilicia before this expedition.

The assistant who turned back

John Mark sailed with them to Salamis on Cyprus as their assistant, and the party's first recorded activity there was proclaiming their message in Jewish synagogues.

He did not finish the trip. After they reached Perga he returned to Jerusalem — a decision that later became serious enough to break up the Barnabas–Paul partnership.

Two separate things, both filed under 49

The 49 on this entry is not one datable event. It bundles Paul's mission at Philippi together with evidence that a Christ-related movement already existed at Rome around the time of Claudius's expulsion order.

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites dates Paul's arrival at Philippi specifically to autumn or winter 49 CE. Other chronologies place it in 49–50 or later, spanning roughly 48 to 50.

Beside a river, then in a cell

Acts reports that Paul's party crossed from Troas through Samothrace and Neapolis to the Roman colony of Philippi, where Paul spoke to women gathered for prayer beside a river.

Lydia, a purple-cloth dealer from Thyatira, was baptized there with her household and then hosted the missionaries in her home.

Acts says Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned after a slave girl's owners lost income from her fortune-telling. On release they encouraged the believers gathered at Lydia's house and left the city.

"Chrestus" and an expulsion at Rome

Suetonius says Claudius expelled Jews from Rome because of recurring disturbances associated with "Chrestus." Acts independently reports that Aquila and Priscilla had recently left Rome because Claudius ordered Jews to depart.

Many scholars read "Chrestus" as a garbled reference to Christ, but the identification is contested, and the expulsion has been dated to 41, to 49, or to 49–50 — one study argues Claudius may have ordered more than one.

What the episode supports is that Christ-related disputes may already have existed at Rome; it is not evidence that Paul founded the Roman church in 49.

A demand carried up from Judea

No exact date survives for the meeting; James Dunn reports proposals from 43 to 51 CE, with 48 or 49 preferred by the majority he surveyed.

According to Acts, visitors from Judea told Gentile believers at Antioch that circumcision according to Mosaic practice was necessary for salvation. The claim provoked a dispute with Paul and Barnabas, and the Antioch community sent them, with others, to Jerusalem — where the apostles and elders took up the question.

Peter, then the missionaries, then James

Acts portrays Peter as opposing the imposition of the Mosaic law on Gentiles, and Paul and Barnabas as reporting on their Gentile mission.

James spoke last, proposing that Gentile converts not be burdened with the law.

A letter, and two men sent to confirm it

The assembly wrote to Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. The letter rejected compulsory circumcision while prescribing abstention from idol-related pollution, blood, strangled meat, and sexual unions or immorality — four restrictions in the standard Acts 15 form of the decree.

It did not simply go by courier. Acts says Judas Barsabbas and Silas carried the letter to Antioch, where its encouraging message was received with rejoicing.

AD 50 is roughly seven years early

AD 50 is not the mainstream date, and no exact day — nor even a universally accepted year — is recoverable for this letter. The best-supported reconstruction places Paul in Greece, probably Corinth, composing Romans between AD 56 and 58.

Published reconstructions include late 55/early 56, late 56/early 57, and dates extending into 58.

East first, then west

Paul addressed the letter to Christians in Rome, introducing himself and his gospel while seeking support for a proposed mission to Spain.

He explained that he would first travel to Jerusalem with contributions from Macedonia and Achaia, and only then hoped to pass through Rome on the way west.

Three separate moments, none of them dated

Composition, dispatch, and reception in Rome were separate events, and the dates of each are unknown. No contemporary source records when the letter left Greece or how the recipients first reacted.

Nor is Romans a detached systematic theology. It carries concrete travel plans, a fundraising setting, a commendation of Phoebe, and an appeal for Roman assistance.

Two letters under one year label

The 57 on this entry compresses two separate compositions into one approximate year. It is not evidence that the letters were written on the same day or in the same place.

One scholarly introduction dates 2 Corinthians generally to autumn AD 57; other chronologies use approximately AD 55/56. Romans is usually assigned to a later stay in Greece.

Titus reaches Paul in Macedonia

Paul and Timothy addressed 2 Corinthians to the church at Corinth and to believers throughout Achaia. At least substantial portions of it were composed in Macedonia.

Titus arrived there with news of the Corinthians' repentance and renewed attachment, which prompted Paul's relief and joy.

Paul urged the Corinthians to complete their contribution for Jerusalem, and sent or recommended Titus and two unnamed associates to oversee it.

By the Romans stage, the money was ready

The place changes with the second letter: Paul was then in Greece, probably Corinth, reporting that the contributions from Macedonia and Achaia were ready for delivery to Jerusalem. He introduced himself to Roman Christians and sought support for travel toward Spain; Tertius performed the writing and Phoebe was commended to the recipients.

The sequence is clearer than the absolute years. Many scholars consider canonical 2 Corinthians a compilation of several Pauline letters or fragments, while others defend its unity — and if it is composite, its components were not all written at once.