Vinnie

I said neither. If you look in my methodology thread, my newest formulation of my methodology is as follows:

Methodological Considerations Guide:

Positive Criteria

MA= Multiple Independent Attestation and//or Independent Attestion of Forms
EC = Embarrassment or "Against Grain"
FS = First Stratum
ID = Incidental Detail
F&F Friend and Foe
DD = Double Dissimilarity
CPD = Contemporary Primary Data
CC = Coherence Criterion

Negative Criteria

Sa = Single Attestation
Ma = Poor Independent Attestation
CF = Creativity Factor or With the Grain
CT = Competing Traditions
AS = Argument Silence
IC = Incoherence Criterion
SC = Supernatural Criterion

As you will notice, I do not have such things as "Veneration of Relics and or Locations" under positive criteria and "Non Veneration of Relics and or Locations" under negative criteria.

For the reasond I already articulated, and that I am not going to repeat, the veneration criteria is dubious and has been convincingly demonstrated to be worthless here.

Vinnie

Haran

By the way, "kicking at the goads/pricks" was a common saying. It is not necessary that it was borrowed from Euripides. As a matter of fact, Aeschylus' Agammenon has the same phrase. Some scholars, such as A.T. Robinson, refer to this when covering the Acts passage in question.

The Bacchae does not seem very similar to Paul's story, in my own opinion. I do not remember reading of Pentheus the King's conversion and he is killed in the end.

rlogan

I think vinnie you might have been in a hurry and just didn't explain yourself completely earlier.

I surmise you are saying your methodology is demonstrating the mythicist position is untenable.

Physical evidence would be a nice thing to have in the positive criteria. That may seem silly to you using a documentary approach. But let me give you an example. Elsewhere I have read examination of Paul's travels, and the analyis was whoever was doing the writing did not have a grasp on the geography of the region. The existence of Nazareth or other places as actual cities. The destruction of the temple for dating.

"Paul the obscure". I really like that. I hope it sticks.

sharon45

Paul performs a circumcision in Acts, yet in his letters, he is strongly opposed to the practice.

Layman

Since Paul confirms that this is where he experience the risen Christ, why do you suppose Acts invented something that Paul himself confirms?

Vorkosigan

Yes, but the argument in the above post was that the meter of the original is preserved in Luke. This is probably why The Bacchae gets identified as the source....

Vorkosigan

Haran

I suppose I'd like to know what is meant by "preserving the meter". How can one preserve the meter when only two small words are preserved exactly the same. The tense of the third word ("kick against") has changed... It is simply a 3 word phrase. Can someone explain the "preservation of the meter" in a short 3 word phrase in which one word has changed tense? I'm not just challenging this. I'd like to know what is meant by this if someone can tell me, because I don't see it.

I can see only the most general parallel to Euripides' Bacchae. Luke may have known about this and probably Aeschylus as well. Perhaps he intended a comparison that Greek readers would recognize, but I don't see the kind of "point-for-point" parallelism that Biff is suggesting.

Haran

Let's see, I'm not sure I understand Greek poetry, but I'll give it a go. It looks like Perseus may have Euripides and Aeschylus formatted in the original meter, if I understand it correctly.

It looks like Euripides' Bacchae has twelve syllables per line in the original Greek. Count them and check me if you like.

It also looks like Aeschylus' Agamemnon has twelve syllables per line.

The phrase (supposedly from Euripides' play) "kicking against the goads/pricks" from Acts 26:14 has 6 syllables. However, the same phrase in Euripides has 7 syllables.

Even if I put the phrase back in the context of Acts 26:14, I can't find 12 syllables that "preserve the meter" of the supposed original Greek from Euripides without chopping off part of the overall sentence and rendering it relatively meaningless.

Peter? You have any idea or understanding of this topic? It's pretty interesting (well, if you like Greek anyway).

Vinnie

its all Greek to me



Just reporting what I find....

Vinnie

Biff the unclean

I see. They are both stories of representatives of older religions persecuting members of a new religion that they don't comprehend. They are both on the road in a state of righteous indignation to persecute some more of these innocent people. Both have an epiphany when both are met on the road by a demigod. Both demigods being the Son of a Trinity consisting of The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. Both of these Gods giving a speech with the same content

Jesus: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest

Dionysos: Better to yield him prayer and sacrifice Than kick against the pricks, since Dionyse Is God, and thou but mortal

Since it was common practice then to lift plots and whole stories from other authors when writing fiction this should be a good indicator that Luke was not concerned with writing a history