Johnny Skeptic

If Matthew, Mark, and Luke always wrote in the third person, does that mean that they did not claim that they saw Jesus perform miracles?

Ben C Smith

No. Ancient writers often wrote even about themselves and things they themselves had witnessed in the third person.

(I myself do not think Matthew, Mark, or Luke saw Jesus perform miracles; but it is not because of the third person.)

Ben.

Toto

Luke, as the author of Acts, did write in the first person plural in a few passages (known as the "we" passages.) But this does not mean that he actually witnesses those events.

Ben C Smith

Let me guess. You are not sure what it actually does mean; but you know it does not mean that.

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
That goes without saying. The better observation is that it means they did not know anyone who made such claims.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

aa5874

Ancient writers also often wrote in the first person, some even employ both first and third person in their writings.

Transient

Even "John" in revelation uses strange poetic language when he says that he "was" on the isle of Patmos even tho he supposedly wrote the letters whilst "on" the isle.
Can't think why you would wait till you left the isle to warn the churches of what was iminent and of danger and in any case he would have just travelled to them after that - ridiculous.
Beats me how writers back then, surrounded bu so much turmoil etc, have the time to write in nice styles etc - total garbage - they are monks etc sitting in nice abbeys eating nice food, dictating their delicious stories to scribes.

Toto

Given that we don't know exactly who wrote Luke-Acts or any of its parts, it's hard to know what it actually does mean.

If Luke was Paul's physician and companion, it seems highly unlikely that Luke wrote the final version of Luke-Acts, which dates to some time after the general consensus is that Paul wrote anything. And it would be hard to imagine Luke, a physician, with firsthand knowledge, not stating his name and the source of his knowledge as part of the narrative, if he had written it.

There are many other possibilities - the narrative could have been cribbed from another source, and the original might have had some first person observations about travel, or even about Paul. I can't rule it out.

But it seems more likely that this is a purely literary, storytelling convention.

I have been meaning to read Pervo's latest book on Acts. (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Ben C Smith

I am not sure I would imagine that Luke actually served as (personal?) physician to Paul. Companion perhaps, but not necessarily physician. But I am unsure what your hesitation is based on when it comes to the dates. Luke-Acts being written in the sixties is an issue quite separate from Luke-Acts being written by a former companion of Paul, even if some have blurred this distinction in practice. Theoretically, a companion of Paul, if he were a young adult at the time, say 20 years old in 50, would be 70 in the year 100, for example, or 90 in the year 120, and a lot of scholars think Luke-Acts was written by that time. (I am not asking you to believe this; I am asking only that you clearly separate the issues.)

Not sure about this. Still weighing the evidence for self reference in ancient books. If you have any insight into this, I am all ears.

That is a tempting option to me, and one that preserves the prima facie meaning of the first person narration.

Maybe, but I think the specific Robbins version of this (to which I used to subscribe) has been sufficiently skewered on this score. I would have to see other stories with a similar trait to know what exactly you meant.

Perhaps the author, for example, wished to pass himself off as a onetime companion of the great apostle. (I think this view suffers a bit from the consideration that he did not name himself, but anyway....) That would still preserve the sense of the first person narration without resorting to obscure (by which I mean basically unattested) literary conventions, since we have plenty of pseudonymous works using the first person for that very effect.

But I started up at least two threads on Luke-Acts and the Marcionite gospel precisely in order to explore a specific variant on your cribbed from another source option above:

1. A former companion of Paul, probably even named Luke, writes a memoir of some kind detailing his travels with the apostle.
2. A (probably) completely different person authors a gospel about Jesus.
3. Some proto-orthodox editor expands both the gospel and the memoir (what we know as Acts) and puts them together, adding a suitable prologue and several parallel structures to each as glue. He retains the strictly third person narration in the gospel and the partially first person narration in the memoir, thus creating a matched pair of volumes and (pseudonymously) attributing all of the gospel and the added parts of the memoir to a companion of Paul.
4. Marcion edits and uses the original gospel (not the reworked gospel) in his minicanon, but not the Acts.

Numbers 3 and 4 might be switched. Not sure yet.

What do you think?

Ben.

Toto

These are all theoretical possibilities, but I don't know how you decide with no data.

I am completely unconvinced by the scenario of a young Luke accompanying Paul and then at age 70 or 90 authoring an anonymous account - an account that seems not to know of any of Paul's letters, that ignores or distorts his conflict with other Christians. That raises many more issues than why someone would use the second person plural.