gnosis92

I think determining this would be important in questions of Jesus historicity and whether and to what extent MJ's interpretation of the Pauline corpos is correct.

Obviously Paul was an important figure in "Luke's" community. Do you think he knew him personally, knew some who knew him personally, or only knew him as a legend? Does anyone know if the "we" accounts in Acts corresponds to the writing style of Paul's authentic letters? Could the "we" accounts come from someone who did know Paul personally, or Paul himself?

Acts 16
When he had seen the vision, we 3 sought passage to Macedonia at once, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
11
4 We set sail from Troas, making a straight run for Samothrace, and on the next day to Neapolis,
12
and from there to Philippi, a leading city in that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We spent some time in that city.
13
On the sabbath we went outside the city gate along the river where we thought there would be a place of prayer. We sat and spoke with the women who had gathered there.
14
One of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, 5 listened, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying.
15
After she and her household had been baptized, she offered us an invitation, "If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home," and she prevailed on us.
16
As we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl with an oracular spirit, 6 who used to bring a large profit to her owners through her fortune-telling.
17
She began to follow Paul and us, shouting, "These people are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
18
She did this for many days. Paul became annoyed, turned, and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." Then it came out at that moment.
19
When her owners saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to the public square before the local authorities.
20
They brought them before the magistrates 7 and said, "These people are Jews and are disturbing our city
21
and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us Romans to adopt or practice."
22
The crowd joined in the attack on them, and the magistrates had them stripped and ordered them to be beaten with rods.
23
After inflicting many blows on them, they threw them into prison and instructed the jailer to guard them securely.
24
When he received these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and secured their feet to a stake.
25
About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened,
26
there was suddenly such a severe earthquake that the foundations of the jail shook; all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose.
27
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew (his) sword and was about to kill himself, thinking that the prisoners had escaped.
28
But Paul shouted out in a loud voice, "Do no harm to yourself; we are all here."
29
He asked for a light and rushed in and, trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.
30
Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31
And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved."
32
So they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house.
33
He took them in at that hour of the night and bathed their wounds; then he and all his family were baptized at once.
34
He brought them up into his house and provided a meal and with his household rejoiced at having come to faith in God.
35
But when it was day, the magistrates sent the lictors 8 with the order, "Release those men."
36
The jailer reported the (se) words to Paul, "The magistrates have sent orders that you be released. Now, then, come out and go in peace."
37
But Paul said to them, "They have beaten us publicly, even though we are Roman citizens and have not been tried, and have thrown us into prison. And now, are they going to release us secretly? By no means. Let them come themselves and lead us out." 9
38
The lictors reported these words to the magistrates, and they became alarmed when they heard that they were Roman citizens.
39
So they came and placated them, and led them out and asked that they leave the city.
40
When they had come out of the prison, they went to Lydia's house where they saw and encouraged the brothers, and then they left.

Toto

The style and content of Paul's speeches in Acts is different from Paul's letters.

You asked about the same question a year ago here. Don't you think it's time you read some books on the subject instead of just fishing around? Would you like a recommendation?

gnosis92

I'll rephrase -- I am asking about the "we" accounts and the author's closeness to Paul. And my response about imitating ancient author's speeches was what I came away with a year ago

neilgodfrey

There's a summary of the arguments of Robbins and Tannehill on the we-passages here

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Malachi151

Toto - Archive Nazi! j/k

For what its worth, here is what my Harper Collins NRSV Study Bible says:

Ben C Smith

Since you are asking for thoughts on the topic, my thoughts are that the author of Acts knew Paul personally at some earlier point in his life.

This is an unusual question. Why should the we passages correspond with Paul? Some might expect the Pauline speeches in Acts to conform to the Pauline epistles (given ancient historiographical conventions, I myself would not), but the we passages? Why?

The author of Acts distinguishes between Paul and himself as part of the we. Refer to Acts 16.10 or 27.1, for example.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

For what it is worth, Peter Kirby critiques the hypothesis of a sea-voyage convention:

Careful analysis shows what one would expect on common sense grounds: the first person is used to indicate presence at the events narrated. There are no known examples of a simply generic first person plural (where the person speaking is not present but rather employing an expected style) in an ancient sea voyage story, and this suggests strongly that an ancient author would not have slipped into the first person plural in response to a supposed demand of a sea travel genre. There is no precedent, and, thus, there is no such literary device.

For my money, the choice is:

A. The we passages were composed to supply fictional verisimilitude.
B. The we passages attest to the participation of the author in the events described.

Ben.

Malachi151

I think that the we passages come from a source that was used. I think that Acts 1-12 is composed from an entirely different source as Acts 13-28, and perhaps there are more breakdowns that this. I'd say that Acts 1-12 is legend and make-believe, and Acts 13-28 is based on more solid sources.

gnosis92

If you're right, then it would appear that outside the letters, Paul and Paul's friend "Luke" understood Paul as preaching a HJ rather than a MJ.

Well I thought the author of "we" could be Paul itself.

neilgodfrey

Even more careful analysis shows that Peter's grounds for rejecting at least one of the examples Robbins used is not valid or at least fails to address Robbins' argument. Peter says the "we" is something slipped into when there has been no prior first person reference. That's not so. The preface to Acts is about "we" and "us".

The "we" passages appear only in relation to a voyage in connection with Rome. And I wonder if it's here that we might find the clue to the vicarious audience identity thing.

The voyages to Rome or a Rome substitute begin from Troas. Compare Aeneas who did not begin his sea odyssey from Troy itself but from a coastal area south of Troy – from the Troad.

The first time a we passage appears is from Troas to an outpost of Rome, a colony of Rome in Macedonia. It took place after a vision reminiscent of the visions of Alexander and Caesar to call them over to a new land.

The second time is from Troas to Rome, after Paul knew that his destination was Rome (Acts 19:21) -- albeit he went via Jerusalem. If Bonz has anything going for her argument that Acts is modeled on an Aeneid like epic then one might at least ask if the Jerusalem detour and conflicts was modeled on Aeneas' detour via that other semitic outpost, Carthage.

If Troas can be related to the mythical Roman founding beginning with a voyage from Troy then a case for the we passages being a literary device to vicariously appeal to a Roman audience may be deemed to have at least an ounce more of weight.

As for Troas, when Aeneas fled from Troy he did not set sail from the city of Troy itself but from near Mt. Ida, on the same coast as the later Troas, in the geographic area collectively known as “Troy” in Virgil’s Aeneid:

‘The Powers Above had decreed the overthrow of the Asian empire . . . Lordly Ilium had fallen and all Neptune’s Troy lay a smoking ruin on the ground. We the exiled survivors were forced by divine command to search the world for a home in some uninhabited land. Se we started to build ships below Antandros, the city by the foothills of the Phrygian Ida . . . In tears I left my homeland’s coast, its havens, the plains where Troy had stood.’ (Aeneid III,1-9)

While Troas is a port several miles south of where Troy stood it is part of the area generally understood as belonging to Troy that was known as the Troad. The geographer Strabo described the whole Troad as being understood as “Troy” in Homer’s Iliad:

“Now as for Homer's statements, those who have studied the subject more carefully conjecture from them that the whole of this coast became subject to the Trojans, and, though divided into nine dynasties, was under the sway of Priam at the time of the Trojan War and was called Troy. And this is clear from his detailed statements. For instance, Achilles and his army, seeing at the outset that the inhabitants of Ilium were enclosed by walls, tried to carry on the war outside and, by making raids all round, to take away from them all the surrounding places: ‘Twelve cities of men I have laid waste with my ships, and eleven, I declare, by land throughout the fertile land of Troy.’ For by "Troy” he means the part of the mainland that was sacked by him.” (13.1.7)

Strabo also explained that all the inhabitants in the Troad from Homeric times were called “Trojans”:

“But the topography of Trov, in the proper sense of the term, is best marked by the position of Mt. Ida, a lofty mountain which faces the west and the western sea but makes a slight bend also towards the north and the northern seaboard. This latter is the seaboard of the Propontis, extending from the strait in the neighborhood of Abvdus to the Aesepus River and Cyzicene (13.1.5)

“And indeed those who are placed under Hector in the Catalogue are called Trojans: ‘The Troians were led by great Hector of the flashing helmet.’ And then come those under Aeneas: ‘The Dardanians in turn were commanded by the valiant son of Anchises’ and these, too, were Trojans; at any rate, the poet says, ‘Aeneas, counsellor of the Troians.’ And then come the Lvcians under Pandarus, and these also he calls Trojans: And those who dwelt in Zeleia beneath the nethermost foot of lda, Aphneii, who drink the dark water of the Aesepus, Trojans; these in turn were commanded by Pandarus, the glorious son of Lycaon. And this was the sixth dynasty. And indeed those who lived between the Aesepus River and Abvdus were Trojans; for not only were the parts round Abvdus subject to Asius, and they who dwelt about Percote and Practius and held Sestus and Abvdus and goodly Arisbe -- these in turn were commanded by Asius the son of Hvrtacus, but a son of Priam lived at Abydus, pasturing mares, clearly his father's: But he smote Democoon, the bastard son of Priam, who had come at Priam's bidding from his swift mares; while in Percote a son of Hicetaon was pasturing kine, he likewise pasturing kine that belonged to no other. And first he rebuked mighty Melanippus the son of Hicetaon, who until this time had been wont to feed the kine of shambling gait in Percote; so that this country would be a part of the Troad, as also the next country after it as far as Adrasteia, for the leaders of the latter were the two sons of Merops of Percote. Accordingly, the people from Abvdus to Adrasteia were all Trojans . . .” (13.1.7)

The name Troas (=Trojan) was given to the port that had originally been named “Alexander” to distinguish it from the other cities so-named. It is not by any means unrealistic to expect that the author and Roman readers alike would with the name of Troas in this context be reminded of the mythical tales of how Trojans, at the time of the fall of Troy, had originally set out from a port a few miles south of Troy (yet within the Troad) before arriving at Rome itself to establish the Roman race.

Virgil’s Aeneid made this tale famous in the first century, along Aeneas who led these Trojans to establish a new home for themselves at Rome. It is not at all unlikely that the author of Acts also intends the reader to see in Troas a reminder of the starting point of the original Romans beginning their journey from the same area of Troy. Aeneas did not begin his sea odyssey from Troy itself but from a coastal area south of Troy – likewise from the Troad.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com