Ted Hoffman

You don't get to make an argument based on an arbitrary, self-serving definition. The definition serves your own purpose. Thus you don't make a case at all. You are assuming it wasn't mentioned because it wasn't worthy of mention. This is begging the question. You need to :
(1) Define what 'worthy of mention means' from AActs POV.
(2) Demonstrate that AActs only wrote what was worthy of mention from his POV.
(3) There is a list of items that the author deemed worthy of mention .
(4) Letter-writing was not among them.

Currently, this is the form of your argument:

I am not lying. Since I'm not lying, I must be telling the truth.

Thus: AActs only mentioned what was worthy of mention. AActs didnt mention Paul's letter writing, therefore Paul's letter-writing was not worthy of mention.

I haven't done that. And I don't appreciate your inclusion of the word 'inherent' in this discussion because I am sure its something you are not prepared, or able to support with arguments.

Your main contention is that there were no examples of people who were recognized for letter-writing, therefore we should not expect Paul to be recognized for letter-writing.
To falsify your argument, I offered John the Baptist who was recognized for Baptizing even though there was no example of someone before him who was recognized for Baptizing.

Verdict There is no need for a precedent of recognition with respect to an act in order for the act to merit mention. So your earlier demand for 'examples of people recognized for letter-writing' has been proved to be baseless and illegitimate and you have accordingly abandoned it. Like many who are losing an argument, you abandon a position that does not favour your position and adopt a new one instead of conceding the error in the earlier argument. But no matter. I am a vulture and I will have the carcas.

You have now shifted your argument.

You are now Arguing that (a) John the Baptist was recognized as John the Baptist because Baptism was anomalous. Is that your new argument? Note that this argument means only anomalous acts were recognized.

And further, you are arguing that (b) because Paul was recognized as an apostle, and not as a letter-writer, its therefore not unexpected that AActs failed to mention that Paul wrote letters.

Are (a) and (b) your new arguments? Let me know beforehand so that when I demolish them, you do not claim I have misrepresented your arguments.

Evidence of what? You merely challenged my argument with demands which I am hereby systematically and patiently proving to be illegitimate and not logically sustainable.

It is silly to provide self-serving definition of a term that is part of your argument. Let me assist once more:

Consider two people. One short and the other tall. They are hungry and have little food that is enough for only one of them.

The tall one says "We need to decide who between us will eat"
The short one nods pensively. The tall one then says, "I think I should be the one to eat". The short one protests, saying "why you and not me?". The tall one answers "because I am Mike and you are Jake". Then the short one says "being Mike doesn't mean you should be the one to eat". To which the tall one says "well, I define 'Mike' as 'deserving to eat'". Then he proceeds to grab the food.

This, dear Rick, is what you are attempting here. And, unlike the short person above, I will have none of it.

Rick, to Toto:
I demolished this "known to contemporaries" argument with the 2 Corinthians 10:10 quote. I will be happy to demolish it once again. Corinthians tells us that people knew Paul to writer powerful letters while his speech was weak.

Toto,
Ah, Toto, you are a delight.

The significance is, its an important aspect of Paul's manner of communication and its very unlikely that someone who travelled with Paul (based on the 'we' passages) would have failed to notice that (a) He carried a bundle of letters (b) Paul took time to write (c) That people talked about Paul's letters. (d) It is very unlikely that Paul never mentioned the letters in his (private) conversations. And more unlikely that having noticed the role of letter-writing in Pauls' life, this said companion would choose to regard it as unimportant and not worthy of mention while talking/writing about Paul.

Now, to your questions:

In would go with this though it needs to be framed to reflect supportable facts. Corinthians indicates that People had already read his letters.

Implausible hypothesis. Acts is dated much later so its unlikely that Paul's letters could have been kept a secret for (50 years or more). And even then, an author who knew and traveled with Paul (based on the 'we' passages) could not have failed to know of his letters.

This is possible. But will need to be demonstrated. I see Acts of the Apostles as 'designed' to invent an Apostolic tradition.

Again, possible but needs plenty of work. I juxtapose Paul with the cynic travellers and wandering charismatics who engaged in "fund-raising theology" (Price). Like the Q preachers, they aimed barbs at the established social conventions. Mack, Crossan and others have alluded to a Galilee that was only marginally Jewish, but highly Hellenized. We have Paul challenging the authenticity of "others" in his letters so I would think he wasn't alone among the wandering cynic travellers and he may have written his letters to give his 'loyalists' food for liturgy in his absence and to ensure nobody 'hijacked' his flock in his absence.

I believe Acts to be mainly a late fabrication. I don't believe the 7 Pauline epistles to be a forgery.

Rick Sumner

1) It is painfully obvious that you have no idea what these fallacies you keep citing mean. This is obvious, because you are misusing them. Maybe if you keep guessing you'll get one right?

2) You have, three times now, stated my argument incorrectly. This is particularly amusing, because I've been presenting the same argument the entire time. How you manage to get something different every time you read it is beyond me, yet you persist.

3) Since you clearly aren't going to bear the burden of proof for your own argument, I'm going to make this ridiculously simple for you, and give you one you simply need to falsify.

Here goes:

1) Nobody else contemporary with Paul is identified as a letter writer by their contemporaries, despite the fact that we know for a fact that people contemporary with Paul wrote letters.

2) Therefore there are no grounds to presume that this trend will be broken based only on the writing of letters.

3) You have stated that letter writing was itself a distinction worthy of mention.

4) From 1 and 2, 3 is false.

Now, all you need to do is falsify premise 1, or show that premise 2 does not follow from premise 1. That's it. Find someone else known for writing letters.

When you have done so, let me know. This has gone well beyond "getting silly" and advanced to the point of ridiculousness.

I note again that there really should be a fallacy for misusing fallacies--particularly when you've just cut and pasted Peter Kirby's example, and then misused it.

Though, of course, there is. It's naught but ad hominem in a pretty disguise.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Ted Hoffman

To be clear, let me recoup and report.

My argument was:

AActs never was a companion of Paul as is alluded by the 'we' passages in Paul.

Evidence: Failure by AActs to mention that Paul wrote letters or that many communities read Paul's letters.
I argue further that people who write about others lives, like biographers do, often mention innocuous details like eating habits, whether the subjects are early risers and so on, even where the significance of the mentioned information is not immediately clear.
Paul's letters were written 'powerfully' as the Corinthians quote indicates and F.F Bruce has appreciated their quality and recognized Paul as having been a prolific writer.
Paul could not have come to be a prolific and powerful writer by writing secretly or rarely. He most likely loved writing and wrote a lot.
It is also implausible that Paul could have kept his letters 'secret' as have been suggested by some because it goes contrary to the Corinthians quote and to Paul's stated recipients of the letters. And even if he did, a travelling companion would have noticed the bundle and found out what the contents were.
The very fact that the letters are Paul's legacy (the fact that they were preserved means they were regarded as important), plus the fact that they were read by many (as the Corinthians quote indicates) makes them worthy of mention while writing about Paul for one who claims to have travelled with Paul during his ministry.

I argue that Paul's letters or letter-writing are a sine qua non when writing about Paul's activities.

Rick objected to my argument and raised some objections.

Ricks objections to my argument:

1. Paul's contemporaries did not recognize him as a letter writer.

Status of this objection: Demolished by 2 Corinthians 20:10 where Paul is recognized as a powerful letter-writer but poor in speech.

2. We should not expect AActs to have mentioned Paul's letter-writing because there was no practice of recognizing letter-writing during/before Paul's time. This argument is supported by lack of anyone prior to Paul having been recognized for letter-writing.

Status of this objection: Demolished by the JBap counter-example: JBap was recognized for Baptizing even though there is no example of someone recognized for Baptizing prior to John.

3. Letter-writing is not inherently worthy of mention therefore letter-writing was not mentioned by the author of Acts.

Status of this objection: Nullified as a circular argument. Petitio principii.

4. New or emerging argument: JBap was recognized for Baptizing because Baptizing was an anomalous act.

5. New or emerging argument: Paul was recognized as an apostle not a letter-writer

6. Other objections raised by Rick:

a) This is silly. Status of this objection: Not an argument therefore doesn't merit a response.

b) Acts is not a biography. Status of this objection: Rick himself introduced the word 'biography'.

c) You have misrepresented my arguments. Status of this objection: No clear examples of me representing his arguments. Thus, a false accusation.

d) Where is your evidence? Status of this objection: In this post and thread. Furthermore, this thread is not about my evidence, but is meant to rigorously evaluate Rick's objections and demonstrate that they are illegitimate and formulated without much thought, in an arbitrary fashion.

e)Latest argument - which is in reality a rehashing of the above arguments.
Premise 1) is tantamount to drawing targets where the arrows have hit then claiming that the areas that have not been hit are not targets. Non sequitur.
The point is, the fact that "Nobody else contemporary with Paul is identified as a letter writer" does not prove Paul's letter writing was not worthy of mention.

Your premise can also be validated if you provide the following:

a) Provide an example of a prolific letter-writer during Pau's time.
b) This example must have written letters that were important (we know this because they were preserved) and were read by communities, not one recipient.
c) Failure of this individual's mention must be occasioned by someone who was their companion, and who chose to write about the life of your example and yet failed to mention the letter-writing element.

Failure to do this invalidates your attempt to treat Paul's example as the norm rather than the exception.

Rick Sumner

Pliny. Seneca.

Pliny. Seneca.

This is the same nonsense you spewed above, to speak nothing of the fact that you've changed your argument. I never said Luke was Paul's companion. It is irrelevant to keep repeating that, because I am not claiming it to be true. I have absolutely no need to find anyone who was a companion of anyone, it's not a position I have advocated. Can I make that clearer? I've only said it three times, in two languages.

You said, and I quote, "The very fact.." In response to my question: " What about the fact that he wrote letters makes it a uniquely identifying feature?"

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...87#post1703887

Except that "the very fact" does no such thing. It is not a uniquely identifying feature, because it is not a feature used to identify anyone else.

This is incorrect. You need to establish that it is an exception, it is expected that he is the norm. To do otherwise is called special pleading. You really need to take some informal logic classes, or read the Nizkor site, or something. You just keep tossing out fallacies in the hope that you get one right.

Besides which, it is not my claim to defend. It is yours. Stay with me: You are claiming Paul should have been mentioned for it. I am saying I don't believe you. It doesn't matter how many times you try and shift the burden of proof (this would be number six, if you're keeping count), you still own it.

This continues to be silly, and grows more so with each post.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Amaleq13

I found a new book that is due out in November of this year that appears quite relevant:

Look here and here for some tantalizing previews but, if you want to purchase it and give this place credit, go here:

Paul and First-Century Letter Writing


At least I hope I created that last link correctly.

Ted Hoffman

Rick,
This explains why you have missed my point all along. My argument aims at disproving that the author of Luke-Acts was Paul's companion.

There is no need for debate with you since that is exactly what I was arguing againt. The fact that you are not arguing for it effectively castrates this discussion because our positions are incommensurable. We are not in the same ballpark: I am arguing its a rugby score and you are arguing that I should prove it is using the rules of football.

Hence you cannot offer a counter-example for my third condition:
Which you now call nonsense.

End of discussion. I can see you are getting worked up. The employment of words like 'silly' and 'nonsense' in successive posts is a signal that we are headed downhill.

It was a delight. See you around sometime

The following links contain some insight regarding how Paul 'wrote' his letters and the setting and ultimately whether AActs should have mentioned them.

http://facultyofchristianity.com/0802825117.html
http://www.abideinchrist.com/messages/romintro.html

Out of curiosity, what do you make of the 'we' passages in Acts? Aren't they an indicator that AActs accompanied Paul in his journeys?

Rick Sumner

I'm undecided on the matter. Peter Kirby makes a compelling case that it is unlikely that the narrative shift would have occurred otherwise. It's also possible that Luke was simply copying someone else's travel log. Or that Luke just made it up to lend an air of authenticity.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

jbernier

Hmmm...not so sure about that. Remember that Acts does not record Paul's death; many scholars would see in that an indication that Paul was still alive when Luke was writing.

Modern biographies, yes. Ancient biographies, no.

Conversely anyone compiling a biography of sorts for Paul may have considered Paul's letter-writing to be irrelevant to those who could not read. Either way this is a bit of problem: Obviously Luke expected that those who read Acts would be literate (he certainly assumed that "Theophilus" was) therefore Paul's prestige to the illiterate was probably not a major consideration for Luke.

Conversely if people knew about his letter-writing then Luke may have considered it unnecessary to include that data. If he was writing to a community which already had copies of Paul's letters than why would he feel the need to say "Oh, btw, Paul wrote letters"?

Unfortunately each of your premises is problematic, thereby making your inference questionable.

As your inference is questionable so is your conclusion.

rlogan

We've been laboring under a pretty ridiculous assertion of Rick's throughout the two threads - essentially that an author of letters is nothing of distinction in 1st century Palestine.

The "proof" he demands for contemporary (1st century) distinction is that two thousand years later we produce someone who was famed strictly for writing letters and that person is furthermore not overshadowed by some other acclaim.

For a feature of any person whatsoever to survive thousands of years through to today would require that the person be of enormous historical significance. Persons of distinction for all sorts of things have not survived in the pages of history - for their prowess in fighting, their stature, beauty, or whatever.

That enormous numbers of people had distinction for one thing or another among their contemporaries and yet are lost to history is undoubtable.
Were we to use the logic demanded by Rick, legions of people through time that were of high distinction for one thing or another with their contemporaries were not in fact of distinction - because thousands of years later we can find no record of it.

Rick has demanded proof of something no person here has asserted - that letter writing alone would be of such 1st century acclaim that this distinction alone would carry through the pages of history two thousand years later.

That, Rick (acclaim lasting thousands of years) - is not necessary as a proof of contemporary (1st century) note for any thing whatsoever.


The positive text evidence that he was noted for being a powerful writer at the time has been provided. I just wanted to dismantle the bogus "proof" that was being demanded.

Rick Sumner

If you do not have any evidence indicating that first century personages were acclaimed for writing letters, than you have absolutely no justification in stating that we should expect them to be so. Unless you have a control test--a way to calibrate expectations--you have no reason to have any. I've suggested at least two off the top of my head, both of which run in the wrong direction for you. Find one that works your way.

It's *your* claim, you aren't "labouring" under any assertion of mine. All I have asserted is that I don't believe you.

You don't just get to touch blue and make it true.

And nobody said a word about proof. This must be the dozenth strawman issued on this topic. What was asked for was evidence.

Regards,
Rick Sumner