Toto

No they're not. They are just a tiresome repetition of the same logical error.

The author of Acts does not mention Paul writing any letters. This does not mean that he knew nothing about the letters or their contents.

Duvduv

But there is no evidence that the author of Acts did know.....and it stands to reason that they were important and would have had some mention that "Paul" wrote to his congregations etc. By contrast, note that despite the correlation about his revelation, neither Galatians or any other epistles says not a word about the great heavenly revelation that Paul got in Acts, but only "revelation" in general which probably means a "clear understanding from heaven" about scripture and of the Christ intellectually - no evidence in Galatians that Paul saw the Christ the way Ezekiel saw the chariots, etc. etc.

Duvduv

Toto, when reviewing the correlation one important point is that whereas the barebones references in the epistles seem to pertain to a celestial Christ, the similar ones in Acts are fleshed out [excuse the pun] to give a historical scenario to the events, which therefore are not exactly the same.

Similarly, some other stories of import presumably should have been described more vividly in the epistles, such as the argument about circumcision.

Indeed, one would have to know why IF they were the same, the epistle author(s) didn't provide more of that historical context - whether that be the "appearance" of the Christ, Paul's departure from Damascus or the "revelation" of Christ to Paul.

Some of the correlations on the list are a bit of a stretch and seem rather forced or very general.

And why Paul couldn't have mentioned the name Saul seems to be mysterious if indeed the Paul of the epistles and of Acts was the same man.

Certainly it is also possible that certain story elements got introduced into certain epistles afterwards especially in the so-called non-authentic ones such as Timothy.
If such interpolations did happen later, and perhaps went both ways, is it possible to figure out where this shows up?

Essentially I think we are left with a situation where both author(s) had some kind of traditions about the guy named Paul, and the author of Acts more than the author(s) of the epistles, who have very little on Peter.
I would find it hard to understand that the author of Acts invented Paul (and Peter) out of thin air (instead of Charlie and Bill) and the epistles also invented them out of thin air.

Finally, we are left with the issue of whether the author of the epistles knew of Acts which INCLUDED ostensibly GLuke, and this does not seem to be the case. So IF the introduction to Acts was there originally, why wouldn't the author of the epistles have known about it? And if Acts came after the epistles, why does Acts ignore some essential theological teachings in the the epistles?

aa5874

Well, you are now stating that the author of Acts does NOT mention any Pauline writings but in an earlier post you claimed "there were numerous references.".

Toto, please identify the numerous references where the author of Acts claimed he used the Pauline writings or stated that he knew of letters by Paul.


It is completely illogical and baseless to argue that the author of Acts knew of the Pauline writings when he did NOT mention them.


The Content of Acts of the Apostles is completely compatible with the theory that Acts of the Apostles was written BEFORE the Pauline writings.

Virtually ALL Apologetic writers of antiquity who made substantial references to Paul claimed or implied he wrote Epistles to Churches EXCEPT the author of Acts who wrote the post-Ascension Acts of the Apostles and Paul up to the time Paul was supposedly in Rome.

Acts of the Apostles was written BEFORE the Pauline writings and the author of Acts has DESTROYED the history of the Church.

It was the Jerusalem Church that wrote short letters of about 150 words and gave to Paul and his faction to be HAND-DELIVERED. [See Acts 15.23-29]

Duvduv

Now with regard to your last sentence, if you believe that Acts was written before the epistles, WHY do you
think the author(s) of the epistles did not include some important elements from Acts? Do you think the epistle writers never saw Acts, and no one ever thought to interpolate Galatians or some other epistle with information from Acts? Do you believe they each stem from a different tradition and location?

aa5874

Well, answer this question.

Why is the later Gospel of John so vastly different to the Earliest gMark?

Toto

I wrote that the "author of Acts does not mention Paul writing any letters." How did you turn that into "the author of Acts does NOT mention any Pauline writings.." ????

My point all along has been that Acts does not refer to letters or to Paul writing letters, but that there are references to the content of the Pauline letters in Acts.

Are you serious about this? Where did you learn English?

Toto

Why are you dragging this out? No one who has studied the issue shares aa's opinion that Acts was written before the epistles. He can't give a coherent rationale for this bizarre idea.

Duvduv

Toto, I apologize for dragging it out. I simply hoped he would stop ignoring my question since he participates so much in the forum.

Toto

This is exactly what you would expect if the epistles were written by a believer in a celestial Christ, and Acts drew elements from the epistles at a later time, when the Christ myth was becoming historicized.

Why exactly?

Are you assuming that the details have to be the same, as if the author of Acts would have used the epistles as a source? This is not the case. The author of Acts only needed to incorporate some themes, which he would rework for his purposes. I seriously doubt that Paul was ever in Damascus. If you read that section of the epistles, Paul is engaging in some sort of allegorical story telling, possibly even stand up comedy.

In this sort of analysis, it is the cumulative weight of the issues.

Please be serious. The figure of Paul in Acts is a fictional figure, meant to represent the Paul who wrote the epistles.

Hve you read Detering on Galatians? That would be the only way.

You have absolutely no evidence of these separate traditions.

This is not a possibility that anyone has ever mentioned. Why are you cluttering up the thread by even mentioning it?

Because, as you say, the author of the epistles did not know of Luke or Acts. Or was a word left out there?

Acts does not ignore them. Acts deliberately tries to counter them.