andrewcriddle

Hi Jiri

IMHO "except the apostles" in Acts 8:1 indicates that the persecution was directed against the Hellenistic Jewish Christians led by Stephen and the other members of the "seven", rather than the apostles and their followers who practised a more traditional form of Temple-oriented spirituality.

IE even if James the brother of Jesus was not an apostle, he was, as a Torah observant Jew devoted to the temple, unlikely to have been at risk of persecution by association with Stephen and his attack on the temple.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

But, Acts 8 makes no reference anywhere to a traditional "Temple-oriented spirituality" of the Apostles. There was no such thing with respect to the Apostles. It was the complete opposite.

The Apostles were non-traditional.

The Apostles were filled with the Power of he Holy Ghost , talking in tongues and performing miracles.

And, if you examine Acts 8 it will be noticed that it states that there was great persecution of the Church at Jerusalem, this must imply that it was the followers of the Apostles who were persecuted.

Acts 8:1-3 -

Steven Carr

Would he have been at risk of persecution for claiming that a crucified criminal was the Messiah?

Or would he just have been laughed at for claiming such a thing?

andrewcriddle

Acts seems to indicate that, at least in the beginning, the mere claim that a crucified criminal was the Messiah was less likely to risk persecution than was the drawing of controversial halakhic implications from this claim.

e.g. Stephen drew anti-Temple implications from this claim (and was killed), Paul drew anti-Torah observance implications from this claim and was persecuted.

(The execution of James the brother of Jesus in the 60's CE may represent a later stage in which supporters of Christianity are becoming seen as threats to Judaism despite their personal Torah observance.)

Andrew Criddle

Doug Shaver

Response to post #29:

My apologies, avi. I've been busier than usual with school this month. I wrote one response already, but gremlins nuked it when I tried to post it. I'll try again as soon I get another chance.

Doug Shaver

You may inquire, but I have to wonder why, considering that I have never expressed any opinion on Paul's letters to Seneca.

I don't think any imagination is needed to reach that conclusion. I think you are being a bit gratuitous in your characterization of opinions that differ from yours.

It is not exclusively patristic by any means, but any inquiry into Christian origins has to examine and account for all of the relevant evidence, and that evidence includes the patristic writings. You do understand, I trust, that treating a document as evidence is not the same thing as believing everything it asserts?

I wondered for a long time what you could be talking about here, until it occurred to me that you were making a sarcastic reference to the lack of any mention of Paul by any Roman historian. You apparently think this requires some explanation. I might think so, too, except that he is not alleged by any credible source to have done anything that would have gotten the attention of any Roman historian.

What do you mean by persuasive? I don't regard my conclusion as final in any sense. I think only that it is justified. The evidence I have is all the known evidence that there is, so far as I'm aware. It might be weak, but if it's all I have, then I go where it goes until I find something better that goes somewhere else.

Paul refers to an apparently vibrant Christian community in Jerusalem. So far as I'm aware, there was no such community left in Jerusalem after the First Jewish War. So, absent good evidence that the letters were forged after the war to make them look as though they'd been written before the war, I presume that they (the originals, I mean) were written before the war.

The evidence I just mentioned is irrelevant to dating Mark.

He doesn't say a word about it, and what he does say suggests that this is because it had not yet happened.

I have no opinion on which Jewish revolt Mark had in mind. I have other reasons for believing that none of the synoptic gospels was written before the second century.

Solo

Hi Andrew,
...and this kind of double-think is precisely what whets my curiosity. Do you know of anyone in the old church who read Acts 8:1's "except the apostles" the way some of the modern interpreters do, restricting the great persecution to the Hellenists in the church ? The text seems clear: πάντες τε διεσπάρησαν...πλὴν τῶν ἀποστόλων. (all were scattered ...except the apostles). Apostles were those 'whom Jesus had chosen' (Acts 1:2, Lk 6:13) and clearly no-one else in the Acts, not even Paul, is eligible for that title. This would be why, I believe, Eusebius had no choice (H.E. 2.1) in interpreting the 'divine scripture' on that point than by equalling "the apostles" with "the twelve".

But of course, if it happened that way, it would be the only known instance in history where the persecutors would expel the rank-and-file and leave the ringleaders in place unmolested.

To be frank, I am very skeptical of a Hellenistic faction in the Jerusalem church. The major consideration is what you mention : James was a holy man, and worshipped in the temple : therefore it would have been very hard for a faction having an issue with the institution of the temple after the fashion of Stephen to prosper under his protection. It may have been that a Hellenist cackle was purged from the church of James, and established itself in the Diaspora, in due time most of it turning Pauline colours. By the time of the Acts, the old issue would have been obsured and overlaid by church unity issues, the need to portray James as an avowed Christian (where the Jesus of Thomas is an avowed Jacobite), and to minimize the initial dependency of the Jesus movement on a host James church and the Jewish community of Jerusalem.

Best,
Jiri