Jane H

Yes, I have read mainstream scholarship, and to anticipate your next comment, as much anti-orthodox as orthodox. The process is a little more advanced than join the dots in Acts. For instance, his lack of interest in combating Gnosticism tells scholars that the letters are likely to pre-date the rise of Gnosticism. Bart Ehrman is very good on this.

Indeed, let me quote Bart Ehrman summarising in 'Lost Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk)' p276
“As already noted, Paul's letters were produced before the New Testament gospels, which date from 65-70 CE (Mark) to 90-95 CE (John)”.

“The idea that Acts is reliable history has been quietly fading”. This is simply not true! Whilst Wikipedia is only definitive in demonstrating the limitations of the concept of “The wisdom of crowds”, the summary of the version present at the time of posting is a pretty fair summary.

As to Luke's ability to do history, perhaps I should quote your very own Richard Carrier “This is not to say that Luke, for example, was a lousy historian. He was certainly better than average”. (Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False?).

“So there is nothing in mainstream scholarship that you can cite that would change my mind, even though I haven't actually formed an opinion yet”. Do you want to rephrase that???

We know a lot about Paul, because he likes giving us his biography and views on things. There are some who suggest the occasional interpolation, but that seems to be a standard approach to any biblical evidence that doesn't fit the writers view. Me, I like to deal with all of it. Even the bits that don't fit. That often teaches me more than the easy bits.

The Jerusalem church was running long before Marcion. And are those newspaper articles written in the paper about Bahai? (Not that it matters. If the London Times barely writes about it, the point is made about how these things can slip through.)

Jane H

Thanks for the reply. My thoughts:

1)Well it would seem a bit odd for Paul to be helping them then! Paul's collection for the poor was just that. It gets very good coverage in the NT that the Jerusalem church was getting help from the diaspora churches, and leads pretty inevitably to the conclusion that the Jerusalem church and Paul worked together.
2)I refer you to my comments on Philippians above WRT Galatians. (What would be the reaction if I simply ignored the established results of scholarship?) With Acts its a bit more flexible, with the Encyclopaedia Britannica stating, “Acts was apparently written in Rome, perhaps between ad 70 and 90, though some think a slightly earlier date is also possible”.
3)I'm struggling with your point here. Mine is that it shows that the diaspora churches were drawing their devotional practice and even their christology from Aramaic roots i.e. the Jerusalem church.
4)Er...he's talking about Peter, the Twelve and James (AKA Mr Jerusalem church) seeing things in Jerusalem. And I can hardly see the Judean churches operating independently from the Jerusalem one.
5)2 Cor 4-5 isn't about the nature of Jesus. “New Jesus” goes with “New spirit” and “New gospel” which, reading on in chapter 11:22-23 is probably the Torah thing again. Exactly the same in Galatians 1:6- a non specific “different version of the Good News” which is enlarged upon (ch 3f) as being Torah observance.
6)1 Cor 16:1 is the Jerusalem collection again. Ditto 2 Cor 8:4,9:1. Romans 15:25,26,31 name the Jerusalem saints specifically. It's pretty clear the immense respect he has for the Jerusalem church.
There was a furore against the Jerusalem church (Acts 8:1).

aa5874

Are you then claiming that Saul/Paul's conversion as found in Acts of the Apostles is a reliable historical event where, contradicting himself at times, the writer claimed Saul was blinded by a light and heard the voice of Jesus presumably from heaven?

Are you saying that the ascension of Jesus as found in Acts is a reliable historical account and witnessed by the disciples where Jesus ascended through the clouds?

Is it historically reliable that the Apostles had what appeared to be fire on their heads when they received some type of Ghost of God and was able to suddenly become multi-lingual?

Please tell me what is historically reliable about Acts of the Apostles.

Solo

Consider it possible, Jane that these "Jewish Christians" are post-70 exiles, who had substantially modified their original 'Nazarene' beliefs to compete for converts with the gentile-dominated Christians in the Diaspora. There are some indications that at first the Jerusalem group did not think of Jesus as Messiah. Given the distincttly anti-messianic nature of Paul's Christ, I think it hugely unlikely that he simply modified existing lore from the Jerusalem people around James.

In the historical scenario that I consider most likely, Jesus was captured after a violent incident in the Temple, and handed over to the Gentiles by the Sanhendrin. The Romans killed him. This did not sit well with the Jerusalem messianists, a church of James that existed prior to, and independently of, Jesus wandering into the city. While they did not necessarily underwrite Jesus' Galilean-peasant-homebake theology, (James being a pious Temple ascetic) they nonetheless saw in him a fellow ecstatic, sent by God to proclaim the End. The "saints" (ie. the ascetic ecstatics) of James would have taken exception to the majority Sanhendrin decision to hand Jesus to the Roman abominables and proclaimed a 'midrash' revelation of him as the Yeshu'a of Zechariah's vision (3), a righteous man, vindicated by God in heaven and earning investiture of a high priest to oversee the arrival of a Davidic messiah. He would have been adopted as the heavenly intecessor of the church and his close collaborators (Cephas and the Zebedees) were recruited as missionaries for the church and 'witnesses' of Yeshu'a's righteousness on earth. That something like that might have happened is vouched for by Heb 3:1, a verse that sharply contrasts with the view of Jesus as Messiah himself.

Somewhere in Syria (likely) James' missions into an excitable tentmaker thinking and acting way above his station. Paul fought the apocalyptic messianic sectarians until he himself - somewhere in mid-life - turned ecstatic and seeing the inner reality of the apocalyptic mindset, he sought to create a new meaning to the Jesus idol he previously despised. Jesus Christ was his creation and it is evident that he fully intended to convince the inner sanctum of James church (the saints, or, the brethern of the Lord, not the Jesus missions, the 'pillars' whom he despised) that his was the true vision of God's intentions to put an and to the sinful nonsense and radically improve the lot of his creation forever. It is also evident that he did not get anywhere with his plan despite collecting money for James all over the known world.

It would have been the war of 66-70 and the exile by the Nazarenes. In the Diaspora they found vibrant Pauline communities operating with the new Messiah concept. They bought into it, as it fit the new reality (Temple gone, baby !). Yup, we killed him - woe to us !

Jiri

Toto

If Bart Ehrman is very good on this, there must be a more persuasive quote you can find. This is a cursory footnote to a section that discusses the numerous forgeries in Paul's name. It gives no reasoning behind the conclusion that Paul's letters were produced before 70 CE.

And it is not clear how anyone can claim that Paul's letters were not interested in combatting gnosticism. (I would argue that Paul's letters were originally gnostic, and was overwritten with anti-gnostic comments, such as "born of a woman.")

This wikipedia article omits any discussion of the foremost scholar in the field of Acts studies, Richard Pervo, author of Dating Acts (or via: amazon.co.uk) and other books, while it does reference the ChristianCadre amateur apologist site. (It also omits any reference to Vernon Robbins.) I think this particular wikipedia article is the result of the evangelical obsession with proving the historicity of Acts, and is hardly a fair summary.

Another out of context quote. See Carrier's full discussion online here.So far, you haven't indicated that you have read the same mainstream scholarship that I have. I wonder about your definition of mainstream.

There are some who do more than suggest that there are interpolations in Paul - there are scholars who demonstrate the probability of massive interpolations. But this is very touchy with believers. For some reason, Christians can absorb the idea that the gospels contain myth (in the best sense of the word) but recoil at the idea that Paul's letters are not what they have been claimed to be.

?? The standard Christian line is that the Jerusalem Church must have disappeared after the first Jewish War, as an explanation for its missing footprints.

The Baha'i religion has been covered in the news in the past year. It has been subject to persecution in Iran, and 6 of its leaders were put on trial as "spies" for Israel. Rowan Williams visited Auschwitz as part of an interfaith delegation that included represetatives from the Baha'i faith. It is always listed among the major faiths in the world. :huh:

Julio

But if the three Pastoral ones are definitely second century, and yet carry Paul's name, what's then true and what's then false?

show_no_mercy

Obviously, there is some inconsistency in the way the catholics glossed over a disharmonious early Christianity.

I don't consider Acts of the Apostles to be any sort of history at all. It is anti-Marcionite propaganda. There are no witnesses to AoA prior to the mid-second century (after Marcion), which just so happens to be the time period that a plethora of other other "Acts" type material was being written.

For example, why would one of the earliest Christian apologists - Justin Martyr - refer to "Memoirs" of the apostles in his polemics which includes non-canonical material from the protevangelsim of James and the Acts of Pilate but not Acts of the Apostles?

Latching on to an Aramaic phrase to prove similar Christology to the Jerusalem church simply does not follow.

And there's no reason to exclude non-Christian Jews from the phrase as well.

If there were no "independent" churches, then where are these people who are preaching other Jesus' and other gospels coming from:


2 Cor 11:4
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

5 But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles."

Who are these "super-apostles" who are preaching "another Jesus"? What other type of Jesus was being preached other than the very human Jesus preached by some sort of proto-Ebionites? Why would Paul call the ambassadors of this different good news "super"? One reason may be because they were evangelizing before him, another reason being that they were a lot better at speech/evangelism than he is. But where would these Judaizing super-apostles come from? The diaspora? Or Jerusalem?

By the way, this Paul that isn't very good at public speaking and is timid (2 Cor 10:1) contradicts the long-winded Paul in Acts of the Apostles.

Jane H

To clarify, I meant that Bart Ehrman does a very good job in explaining how the dating process works, which is rather more rigorous than your earlier comment suggested. Space inhibits expanding on his reasoning- best to read him.

I'm sorry you don't find the Wikipedia article fair. I had hoped we could agree on its broad conclusions. Those would be that there is a spectrum of belief, with the usual suspects at both ends, and most in the middle. For example, most would agree that e.g. Peter's speeches are reconstructions, rather than verbatim transcripts of a Peter-cam. On the other hand, most would agree that Luke travelled with Paul, and the end is genuine autobiography.

As an aside, I find the challenges to Luke's involvement with Paul revealing. They involve convoluted theories imposed on a perfectly simple idea of two people who sailed together. Perhaps having someone so close to the action is so unpalatable to non-Christians that they feel the need to create issues with something no-one would ever normally think of questioning.

My comment is in context in that RC is saying in the piece, 'Luke's history telling abilities aren't good enough for establishing the resurrection to modern standards'. Otherwise, and for our purposes of using Acts as history, Luke is “better than average”. By academic mainstream, I'm referring to the sort of writers are on reading lists for the better universities. Wright via Vermes to Ehrman.

The Daily Mail online search says there hasn't been an article mentioning the Bahai since 2000. This backs up my clear impression from reading it daily that the Daily Mail never mentions Bahai. (horrible paper-only because I can read it for free). Perhaps US papers work differently, but my point remains valid, that it is possible to write a lot about society without mentioning a small religious sect.

Any Christian who can't deal with interpolations is always going to struggle (ending of Mark!). I don't have a problem, but again, you're badly exaggerating the academic centre of gravity on this. The majority of interpolation claims seem (again) to be motivated by a desire to remove inconvenient challenges to non-Christian belief.

Jane H

1)Only a certain sort of Catholic. Most intelligent ones know there was a Torah issue.
2)See discussion with Toto previously
3)see below
4)Jerusalem mainly (James friends Gal 2), although I wouldn't rule out Judea.
5)Paul is being sarcastic in talking about “super-apostles”. These were Torah following Christians (see 4) above ) who weren't prepared to let their ideas on the nature of Judaism go, and tried to impose Torah on the entire Christian church. Torah observant Christianity lasted a long, long time, and the Ebionites may have had some roots there. The battle is spread throughout the NT.

On 3) I suggest the following. Maranatha is mentioned without explanation by Paul who clearly expects the addressed Greek speakers to know all about it. It is an invocation to the glorified Jesus either eschatologically or as worship. It is an obvious cultic invocation of Jesus. The explanation that works best by a country mile is that Paul introduced it, like “Abba”, to the Corinthians as part of the vocabulary, practice and beliefs of the Israel based church. If it emerged outside Christianity, it has left no trace of that, and it's much easier to see why it would have transferred within Christianity rather than outside. Much like “Amen” still around today. It is good evidence of the transfer of information from Israel to Pauline Christianity.

(See comments to Toto on speeches in Acts). I agree completely that Paul was a poor speaker. People would fall asleep in his sermons (Acts 20). Mind you (and this is true), one of our preachers is so bad that he once actually fell asleep in his own sermon.

show_no_mercy

I continue to fail to see why you bring up Acts of the Apostles as though it has any history in it. This is simply apologetics and appealing to tradition. Irenaeus is the first person to introduce the Christian world to a person named "Luke" in 180 CE as a physician traveling with Paul. Paul mentions a Luke but there's no reason that the two people are one and the same. There's no evidence for any of the history in Acts of the Apostles. The earliest witnesses to our current "Luke" are Marcion, Tatian, and Justin Martyr. None of them recount the particular salutation to a "Theophilus". Is it coincidence that a Christian named "Theophilus" was an eclectic Christian who lived in the late 2nd century who seems to not even know about Jesus? He said he was a Christian because he was "anointed with the oil of god".

And again, no witness to Acts of the Apostles before the late 2nd century. The fact that it was written in third person alone precludes it from being any sort of eyewitness testimony. It switches to first person plural whenever there were sea voyages, which seems to be a Greek literary device used for describing sea voyages. Just because it names historical places and people is no reason to treat the rest of it as historical. The 2nd century "Acts of John" mentions a temple to Artemis in Ephesus, but this is no reason to assume any of the other miraculous events in that Acts of... occured.

Josephus recounts that when he turned 16 (which would be around 53 CE), he wanted to get a feel for the big three philosophies in Judaism. He names the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. Why does Josephus not recount anywhere about any of the miraculous conversions of massive amounts of Jews and Greeks to Christianity that should have been happening in his lifetime? There's no reason at all for trying to use Acts of the Apostles as a source of history yet refuse to use any of the other "Acts of..." that proliferated in the 2nd century.

As for "maranatha", there's no reason to assume that only Christians used this phrase. It simply means "the lord comes". There's no "Jesus" in the phrase, so this would be used by any apocalyptic Jews of the time period. You have yet to provide a reason why non-Christian Jews would refuse to use this phrase in the tumultuous time period of rabid messainism in 1st century Palestine. All of these Jews wanted the lord's kingdom to come, so the phrase "maranatha" would have been in wider use than Christian circles.

While there's no extant full Aramaic of 1 Enoch (an Aramaic 1 Enoch was found in the DSS), Jude quotes the phrase "the lord comes" (v14) from his Greek version of 1 Enoch 2:1, so the phrase "maranatha" might have been in the Aramaic version of 1 Enoch.