Duvduv

AA, what does this have to do with my point about The Way versus the Christians named in Antioch??
Isn't a Christian a follower of Christianity and not a follower of the Way or a Wayer? Although we'd be at a loss to know WHAT WAY the fellow was actually referring to.

aa5874

IT MEANS YOU CANNOT ARGUE THAT THERE WAS AN HISTORICAL JESUS BECAUSE IT IS ALL HORSESHIT.

You need credible dated sources.

TELL YOUR OLD CHURCH MEMBER THAT IT CANNOT BE ARGUED THAT THERE WAS AN HISTORICAL JESUS BASED ON SUCH HORSESHIT

I CANNOT ARGUE THAT THERE WAS AN HISTORICAL JESUS BASED ON THE HORSESHIT IN ACTS.

No texts of Acts have been recovered and dated to the 1st century and before c 70 CE so I will consider that Acts of the Apostles is non-historical---horseshit.

I will REVIEW my position when NEW CREDIBLE DATED sources are found.

My argument is SOLID. Acts of the Apostles Destroys any argument for an HJ with Horseshit stories.

Duvduv

It is worth noting how the themes found in Acts regarding Jesus (as opposed to Paul or Peter) that resemble those in the epistles are relatively few, while the recurring themes relate to the importance of the NAME of Jesus, invoking his name and the generic notion of Jesus as the "messiah" (whatever that is supposed to mean to the reader). Acts does not introduce the themes, logia or storylines of the gospels even for didactic purposes.

A handful of doctrinal concepts such as "the grace of Jesus," "faith in Jesus," forgiveness/repentance, or salvation through him provide no context at all, and provide the reader with no information as to how these attributes expressed in the doctrines actually function. It is almost as if the author(s) take for granted that the reader is either already very familiar with the entire body of church teachings and doctrines, or these doctrinal references are introduced as interpolations in the form of quotes.

The author(s) never "reminds" the unfamiliar reader about the context of those teachings.

aa5874

Acts of the Apostles has the simplest of teaching for Remission of Sins--the Jews must ADMIT they killed Jesus, God's Son, be Baptized and they will be saved and receive the Gift of a Ghost.

Acts 2Acts of the Apostles appears to be compatible with the Forgery called the long gMark.

Mark 16 It would appear that the author of Acts did NOT know of the Pauline Revealed teachings of the resurrected Jesus that salvation was obtained when Jesus was raised from the dead.

Onias

Please note the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit in John 20:22, long before the Acts giving of the Spirit.
Jon

aa5874

We have many versions of the Jesus story and at least 5 Canonised versions. In Acts, the disciples received the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost which was promised by the resurrected Jesus in gLuke.

Acts of the Apostles is based on the story of Jesus found in gLuke--Not gJohn.

Luke 24:49 KJVActs 1:4 KJV

Duvduv

People are not focusing on the points I made at all. Perhaps I have to make myself clearer.

I am specifically and simply addressing the content and CONTEXT of the Book of Acts. I am pointing out that overall the teachings/doctrine of Acts is not as developed as it is in the epistles.

And in the handful of places where there is a point of doctrine that sounds like more mature orthodoxy, it sounds as if it was placed as an interpolation in the form of a quote. The meaning of the idea is never explained, leaving it to the imagination of the reader or assuming the reader is already well-informed about those sparse references.

I also pointed out that that Acts does not employ or introduce information or maxims from the gospels or at least in the name of Jesus, who is rarely referred to as "Christ" in Acts.
Jesus is usually simply described generically as the "messiah" and a source of healing and "salvation" when his believers invoke his name.

Duvduv

You cannot say it is "based" on any particular gospel unless you are *sure* that Acts came AFTER the gospel in question, and there is no way this can be empirically proven.
Plus, as we know, the Paul of Acts is not the same Paul as the Paul of the epistles.

There is also no way of knowing whether the redactors wrote certain texts and then went back and interpolated back and forth until a certain point in time.
One would imagine that some redactor would have wanted to introduce the name Saul into Galatians at least once just to harmonize a bit the otherwise rather different story line of this person.

It is impossible to know whether all these texts looked the same at the outset of the emergence of the religion as they look now. Which were final drafts and which were rough drafts? It's impossible to say. As handwritten scribal documents, maybe versions got mixed up at first and certain drafts had been more or less harmonized than others. Especially given the fact that so many official teachings are not found in the texts themselves as we know them but developed later.

Duvduv

It should be noted that the concepts of salvation, grace etc. are discussed somewhat more in detail in Romans, Ephesians and 1 Corinthians, and in a more explicit way in GJohn. Yet of course we know that these texts are NEVER referenced in Acts a single time, and the handful of times the ideas are mentioned in Acts they are given without any context. So it would seem the ideas were fleshed out after Acts was put together in drafts and composites.

Duvduv

I was thinking how ironic it is that for all the differences in GJohn from the synoptics without GJohn Christianity would not have so much of its soteriology and other elements that make the religion what it became.