gnosis92

What were the source material for Luke's Acts on Paul? It does not appear that the author of Acts (for convention we'll call him Luke) read or was familiar with the Pauline epistles, and the 4 NT Gospels and Thomas make no mention of Paul.

What are the sources Luke used to write about Paul, why is Paul not mentioned in the Gospels nor retro-dicted by Jesus, yet he plays a primary role in Acts, one that surpasses the 12.

Do you think that Luke either knew first-hand Paul, or knew second hand those who did know Paul?

Was Luke familiar with a community of early Christians that regarded Paul as the primary apostle, and if so, why no mention of his epistles, and no mention of Paul's (alleged) Christ mythicism?

My position is that Luke either knew Paul personally, or was 1 or 2 persons removed from Paul, and may have been familiar with many of Paul's writings and preachings, was in contact with a communities that did know Paul directly, and none of which provides any support for Doherty's Christ-mythicist position (Doherty's interpretation of Paul's understanding of Christ). For Luke, Paul's epistles were of minor importance to him, it was Paul's earthly preachings that was important, and what Luke presents is a Paul who thought Jesus was a figure of history.

Tigers!

Historically the church seems to have accepted that Luke knew Paul at some stage in each others lives.

DCHindley

Good question. I once looked at all of Peter's and all of Paul's speeches in Acts and compared their contents to statements found in the Pauline epistles. Unfortunately I never made a formal study of it. I will say, though, that Peter's speeches seemed to contain more doctrines that corresponded to the non-christological pssages than those that were Christolgical in essense. Paul's speeches, on the other hand, did not seem to contain anything about the faith of Abraham. I'll have to take a re-look Sunday (during the daylight hours).

Well, gotta go and "spring ahead" my clock (meaning I'll loose an hour's sleep tonight) and hit the sack.

DCH

Toto

It does appear that he was. There are enough common details to indicate that the author of Acts knew the epistles and at times drew on them, at times riffed on them.

No. Acts uses Josephus as a source, and was written in the second century.

That is sort of what Luke presents. But that Paul is a fictional construct.

chrisengland

I don't think you have much scholarly support for that.

DCHindley

This sort of blurs the distinction between a "reconstruction" of history and pure fiction. All history is a selection from among all the actual "facts." Unfortunately, the facts known to any one historian must need be a subset of all facts, as no one can know everything that happened in any one event. They are at very least what the author thinks are "facts" about the subjects of his inquiry. The historian explains this sequence by setting them within a plot structure, decides on an argumentative strategy, and goes to work. Of course, he will also be influenced in his choice of metaphors and tropes by the "spirit of his age" (either to conform to them or to play them for effect), and his own ideological positions will be reflected in his choice of plot structures and argumentative strategies with which he is familiar, and how he decides to use them in conjunction with one another.

While the process of reconstructing history and writing fiction both involve this same literary process, they are not identical in that one conveys made-up info (fiction) and one conveys an author's understanding of actual events, which may convey (and should be expected to convey at least some) actual factual detail. Would we say that historical accounts of WW2 must all be fiction? But even among participants (American, French, British, Polish, USSR, German, Italian, Eastern European, Japanese, China, Indo-China, India & Asia, etc) you will get several quite different portrayals of even the very same battles and campaigns. They are different because history is part story. We cannot get past that, so we just have to learn how to deal with it.

What we really have here is "Luke's" reconstruction of what he thinks Paul should have been like, using what few legendary "facts" that he thought he knew about the man. The problem is that 2nd century Christians seem to have only the skethciest idea of the early history of the Christian movement. Look at the uncertainty about Judas' and James' deaths (there are at least two versions of each) or the later romances about the fates/travels of the other close disciples/apostles of Jesus.

DCH

Doug Shaver

For the same reason Napoleon is not mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities.

gnosis92

I accept the Gospels were written several decades have the events they (purportedly) relate. Whether the Gospel writers had a reason to include Paul in their narratives is open to debate, but Luke thought it important to make Paul the central figure of Acts, surpassing Jesus 12.

gnosis92

I've not read everything you may have read, but are there any compelling evidence in Acts that Luke read the epistles directly (and if so why doesn't he mention, Paul, in his letter to the Galatians) and that Luke's Paul is purely fictional, when there are several known overlaps between Luke's Paul and Paul's Paul (Bart Ehrman describes some in his books)

Toto

Yes I do. Steve Mason (a foremost Josephan scholar) has detailed the evidence. You can read a summary of his argument here.