capnkirk

I quite agree that we do not have to presume the Syrian city. What I am proposing is that it could have been, and if it was, the valid objections you make may well provide clues to the real nature of Saul's mission.

First, the High Priest was appointed by the Roman governor, and to protect his (and the Sadducee party's) wealth and status thus became a Roman quisling. He was given 'police powers' (there is no other description for the work he had hired Saul to do). The High Priest was not exercising religious authority, but political.

Damascus had become a haven for all sorts of Judean refugees from Roman oppression, as it was outside Roman jurisdiction. If the High Priest did in fact send Saul to Damascus, it had to be a clandestine mission to kidnap/arrest high value targets. Nothing less would have been worth the risk.

Yes, the account in Acts is distorted on several counts. Its author, Luke, was an ardent Paulinist, and as such needed to recharacterize Saul's Damascus mission, and also needed to downplay the depth of the disagreement between the Jerusalem Church and Paul. To do this, he also had to reinvent Peter as the transitional figure between Judaism and Xtianity. It was precisely this reinvention that I was trying to evaluate by searching for any documentation that Peter ever went to Rome, and if so, just what wah he preaching...when I started this thread.

Layman

Except Paul admits that his conversion occurred in or near Damascus.

And you are queston begging. You can only say there is no historical record of Aretas IV controlling Damascus if you assume Paul contains no historical information. We do not know who all controlled what for much of our history of this time.

Toto

As I argued in the thread that I linked, Paul's somewhat ambiguous statements regarding Damascus do not appear to be historical testimony. It is more likely that he referred to Damascus as a code for something else.

Toto

Damascus was a border town, not exactly outside Roman jurisdiction, but perhaps far enough away. But what is your evidence that it was a haven for Judean refugees? Why would Peter have been there - our primary evidence of his historical existence is Paul's letters, which tie him to the Jerusalem Church.

Luke or whover wrote Acts appears to have been more of a conciliator than a partisan of Paul. How did he recharacterize it? Why would he have omitted the detail that Paul was pursuing Peter if he knew it - that would just make the story that much more dramatic.

Layman

I guess I just do not find a reference to "Damascus" the "city of the Damascenes" to be all that ambiguous.

Amaleq13

Are you basing that on Gal 1:15-17?

"But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus." (NASB)


He obviously doesn't explicitly support your claim but I can see where (especially with Acts in mind) it could be read so. Without the Acts claim, however, would you still assume Damascus was the location of his conversion experience? I realize such a question is problematic in the same sense of asking a jury to forget testimony they have heard that was subsequently ruled inadmissible but I have wonder if anyone would reach that conclusion if Acts didn't exist (or didn't make the claim).

capnkirk

I am NOT treating the document per se as history. What I am doing is pointing out a small section, accredited to a group that was denounced by the Xtian church, that contains statements antithetical to the premise of the larger work. The author himself attempts to refute the claims.

When I read a fictitious document that purports to be true, and I find that document quoting an antithetical source that it then attempts to discredit, my inquisitive mind begs the question: 'Why do they feel the need to discredit this source?" and the answer usually is that the source contains an inconvenient truth that needs to be expunged from the record.

That is the slim claim to credence that I endow this quote with. The Church wrote the Ebionites off as 're-Judaizers' trying to redefine the Christ back into a Jewish context, but their beliefs about Jesus and Paul reflect almost exactly what an orthodox Jewish sect would believe about a Jewish messiah.

Layman

I think the most reasonable reading of the passage is that Paul claims some sort of conversion experience in or near Damascus. He stresses that he did not go to Jerusalem, but instead when to Arabia. Then he "returned once more to Damascus."

There is no stretch involved here. Nor any need to accept Acts' account to come to this conclusion. It's what Paul himself indicates.

Toto

Sorry, I'm not following - which quote? which source? who is trying to discredit what?

spin

Au contraire to your au contraire, Rome was in control of Damascus all the way through the period. Lucius Vitellius was in charge of Syria from before he set up good relations with the Parthian king, Artabanus II, circa 34 CE (Suetonius: Life of Vitellius 2). After Vitellius who was in Syria at least until the death of Tiberius and then some, Petronius (Arbiter) was appointed to govern Syria under (C/Gaius) Caligula. Vitellius was in Syria at the time he was given orders to deal with the Nabataeans. There was no window whatsoever for Aretas IV to have had control of Syria. Syria, with its principal city of Damascus, was entrenched as a functional part of the Roman empire.


spin