neilgodfrey

If the we passages are a self-evident claim then is it not odd that they have prompted so much curiosity and debate over the years?

My thoughts on the Roman epic emulation are more thoughts than anything and I won't fight to the death over it, but I do like to test the idea by bouncing it around here and there. But that we can view the we passages in the context of a Hellenistic novel rather than in a history is evident to me for the reasons I gave. One criticism of the Bonz thesis is that she lacked that sort of detail. To my mind, the details do appear to be there in comparison with the Rome founding epic. (Or maybe she was more cautious about publishing them.) And the lengthy diversion to Jerusalem -- after announcing he is to go to Rome -- really does seem a clear emulation of the Odysseus and Aeneas lengthy sea-faring diversions on their ways to their divinely ordained destinations.

Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com

Gregg

Yes there was.

A divine figure that was every bit as real to them as Yahweh was to the Jews and Zeus and Apollo and Athena were to the Greeks and Romans.

Nothing prevented the Jews, Greeks, and Romans putting speeches into the mouths of their gods according to what they believed their character to be.

(From this perspective mythicism makes a heck of a lot more sense, since the Jesuses of the Gospels are considerably different in character.)

Ben C Smith

For centuries it was simply accepted that a companion of Paul wrote Acts.

The debate started only when this connection between Paul and the author of Acts came to be thought of as impossible in some quarters. Even at that, however, it has been customary to say that the we passages were either part of a genuine journal from a real companion of Paul (taken over by the author) or a fiction perpetrated in order to make it seem as if the author accompanied Paul.

The notion that the we passages were simply a misunderstood literary device is quite recent, AFAICT.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

What I was saying is that the question of how faithfully the gospels have recorded Jesus becomes the mootest of all moot points if Jesus did not exist.

Ben.

Julian

SPECULATION WARNING!

I suspect that Paul, his name or person, was an influential factor in many areas in and around Asia Minor, the early breeding ground of christianity, and that Luke needed to reconcile that legacy with his orthodox recasting of history. In the battle for the church, a battle orthodoxy was losing in the early/mid second century, he needed those congregations behind him. He needed their founder/leader/perceived-influential-historical-person Paul to bolster his claim. Luke may, or may not, have been familiar with his letters but was certainly in a position to disregard them for reasons that we can only speculate on. Maybe Marcion used the legacy of Paul, in a manner, and for reasons, similar to Luke's, and wrote the Pauline epistles in his name because he also needed the weight that Paul lent to an up-and-coming church movement. Speculation, I know, but Marcion does have more of a claim on the Pauline legacy than does Luke. Orthodoxy then stole the weight of Marcion's movement by re-writing the Pauline epistles more to their own liking. Maybe Marcion and Luke wrote at the same time and for similar reasons. Marcion lost, Luke didn't and hence Acts is canonical and 'historically weighty' while Marcion has been relegated to the ranks of smeared and failed frauds. Winners write history, especially the history of how they became winners and the people they defeated.

In summary I guess I would say that we don't know if Luke knew of the Pauline epistles but if he did then he certainly ignored them. It is not possible to reconcile Paul of Acts with Paul of the epistles for simple and straightforward philosophical reasons, forget speech and manner (which we cannot truly know based on extant writings).

One thing I know for certain is that we cannot know much of anything for certain, but I am not certain of that. Acts isn't historical, obviously, but maybe some of it is, even if it is only the name of Paul. In the absence of corroborating evidence from a source not involved in using religion to rule the world we will never know. I, for one, do not believe in the integrity of the men who wrote the bible just as I don't believe in the integrity of the men advocating its veracity today.

Julian

Julian

I agree. Luke wanted to win and was willing to do whatever necessary to make that happen. He didn't invent Paul because that would serve no purpose, he needed the authority only a historically important person could add. Particularly one who cannot refute what you are writing.
If we assume that there was a real Paul hidden in the epistles somewhere we can discard the pieces that do not fit certain assumptions.
Sure, it could have been a turbulent relationship. That doesn't change the fact that they didn't agree on the fundamentals. It doesn't change the fact that neither of them would have agreed with the agenda of Acts. They mostly agreed to disagree. Of course, Luke, as one of the 'Palutians,' disagreed with both of them but he needed their power. Good thing they weren't around when he shaped them into a hammer.
Whether Luke knew Paul or not (I don't think he did, Luke is far too late) is irrelevant since all he needed was Paul's authority.

Julian

Ben C Smith

Duly warned.

If Paul was influential in Asia Minor, I think it is more likely that he was influential based on his epistles and on his founding of churches than that he was influential for some other reason.

I think quite the opposite. Marcion no longer had any foot at all in Judaism. Paul was a Jew, as Luke recognized very well.

I agree that there are dissonances between the Paul of the epistles and the Paul of Acts. However, there are also so many assonances that I cannot bring myself to speak in such absolute terms (not possible to reconcile). What are your major obstacles?

Ben.

Julian

I think tradition. I mean, why do you think the epistles? Because we have some of them? They didn't seem very important until later in the 2nd century. I think that your opinion here may be biased by viewpoint, i.e. we have his epistles and they are important to christianity today whereas we are not members of small, early christian churches in Asia Minor. Just sayin'... I doubt that he founded a significant amount of churches, he just got the credit, in the same way that Luther started the reformation but didn't really do most of the work which was done by untold numbers of adherents. Not that Paul (and Luther) do not deserve credit, just that they don't necessarily deserve as much as they get.
How do we know that Paul was a Jew?

Anyways, what better person for Marcion to use than a Jew who says to forget the law and focus on faith? That's even better than a gentile.
Well, I have to go and eat dinner in 12 minutes or SWMBO will beat me about the head and shoulders so I have no time to list this in detail but I will return to it. I think that the authentic core of Paul's letters is as close as we can get to what actually happened, fascinating stuff. I started reading Acts following my earlier replies in this thread and got caught up in it. Weird, huh? Anyways, Paul quotes the gospels all the time in order to convince people of this, that, and the other thing. Something he nevers does in the epistles, in my mind because there were no gospels. We can put that down to what we talked about earlier: Luke is writing Paul's speeches for him. But he isn't even close to the epistles. What is Paul's stance on the law in Acts and the epistles? To my mind, far apart. Anyways, I am being called. I will write more later, although I am feeling a brand new thread coming on.

Julian

Ben C Smith

Well, yes, but tradition of what? I think there was a strong (and accurate) tradition that Paul was a writer of epistles.

Not at all. For numerous reasons, none of which boils down to we have some:

1. Paul himself writes: For they say: His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive, and his speech contemptible. His epistles had some fame even within his lifetime.

2. 1 Clement 47.1: Take up the epistle of the blessed apostle Paul.

3. Ignatius to the Ephesians 12: [Paul] ...who in all his epistles makes mention of you in Christ Jesus.

4. Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Laodiceans, Alexandrians, 3 Corinthians, and the correspondence with Seneca are, IMVHO, pseudonymous epistles. Forging an epistle or two in the name of a famous person is one thing; forging so many suggests to me that one of the things such a person was famous for was writing epistles.

5. The epistle to the Hebrews, while not pseudonymous, was attributed to Paul, another sign that Paul was known as a writer of epistles.

6. Marcion used the Pauline epistles. We also have the so-called Marcionite prologues.

7. 2 Peter 3.14-16.

I do not think so.

I think that Paul was famous for founding churches in the areas where he worked; outside those areas, his fame would have rested on other things, such as his epistles.

I do not take Marcion to represent the original Pauline writings. Harry Gamble Jr. made a splendid argument, for example, in favor of the originality of Romans 15-16 (absent in Marcion) to that epistle; but if that is the case then Paul is almost certainly a Jew (see Romans 15.15-16).

I disagree. I think he is spot-on at times, parallel at times, and off at other times. It is not a clean break from Pauline thinking any more than it is a perfect reflection of it.

Ben.

Gamera

My point is very narrow -- your conclusions about Luke's relationship to Paul may be right or wrong, but Luke's characterization of Paul's speeches is at best nonprobative of the issue, and to my mind, mildly supportive of the personal relationship between Luke and Paul.

It is an odd coincidence that Paul writes that his speeches were rather unimpressive in contrast to his writings, and Luke's rendition of Paul's speeches are in fact rather unimpressive or at least not equal to his epistles.