andrewcriddle

Could you give me your evidence for this please ?
The Temple at Leontopolis was IIUC shut by Vespasian in 73 CE apparently from concern that it might be used as a rallying point for Jews who refused to admit the war was over.

See Josephus Jewish War book 7 chapter 10.

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle

My history is very vague here, but what is the Jewish fort to the South that held out to the Romans before being destroyed? Could Paul have been there?

Imagine Paul being trained at Qumran, post the fall of Jerusalem - were sacrifices transferred there?

He writes his stuff in Corinthians a couple of decades later - using Roman play ideas.

It should not be too difficult to create a time line starting at the fall of Jerusalem.

andrewcriddle

One general point.

Unless one adopts an extremely late date for Luke-Acts then to have Paul active up to 90 CE means that Acts is written within at most 35 years of Paul's death and probably considerably sooner..

This would make it surprising that Luke should get the chronology that badly wrong.

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle

Acts 6 The Message - ..hard feelings developed among the Greek speaking believers towards the Hebrew speaking believers because their widows were being discriminated against in the daily food lines...

Umm, everyone assumes this is about everyone holding everything in common, what if the reality is that we are discussing a post fall of Jerusalem refugee camp scenario and the xians were so popular because they had attempted a rational distribution instead of a free for all. This dispute is classic in a refugee situation.

Someone writing much later might assume everyone knows we are in the middle of a war zone - when the different groupings were killing and betraying each other - earlier in Acts all this stuff about the priests fits the destruction period better - but because the key message is to holy spiritualise everything, the reality of time and place gets pushed aside.

Clivedurdle

Ananias and Sapphira makes a lot more sense in the middle of a siege.

Clivedurdle

But the purpose of Acts is not chronology, it is blatant propaganda and evangelism!

S.C.Carlson

I would agree. This means that, for Leidner's idea of a post-70 Paul to be viable, it would have to be explained why a such post-70 Paul would create 2 Cor. with an implied setting in the mid-50s.

Another problem with Leidner's idea is methodological. It doesn't make much sense to date the entirety of the Pauline corpus to be as late as its (allegedly*) pseudo-Pauline bits.

(*I say allegedly because it is not clear to me what Leidner's views on Pauline pseudepigraphy are from the excerpt.)

Stephen Carlson

Clivedurdle

From encyclopedia.com

Can we confirm it is the same Aretas?

Is the above correct?

Peter Kirby

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for the post.

In 106 CE, there were no more kings ruling over Damascus. Nabatea was reformed into the Roman province of Arabea. So while I was considering an "Aretas V" in the second century (per your "IIUC" note), no such person exists.

There is another time when Damascus was under a king. Aretas III held the city from the year 85 BC. Tigranes of Armenia held the city subsequent to that date, and the Romans under Pompey took the city in 64BC. So there is the possibility that the letters of Paul were written or projected onto the first half of the first century B.C., for those who would allow it. At least we know (from a means other than 2 Corinthians) that this King Aretas held Damascus. However, I don't know that it has anything else going for it.

best,
Peter Kirby

Toto

Kenneth Doig, in New Testament Chronology makes a valient effort to fit Paul into historical chronology. The whole thing looks very forced to me. There is no indication that Aretas IV ever ruled Damascus except for that sideways reference in Paul's letters, transmogrified by the author of Acts into a similar-sounding event, but with the Jews instead of Aretas being the villain.

There is an article on Peter Kirby's christianorigins site Paul and Damascus, which seems to think that Damascus is a standin for Qumran. It relies on the discredited notion that Qumran was an Essene colony, but otherwise makes more sense to me that the idea that Aretas took over Damascus and chased after a second string missionary for a weirdo sect that had little influence at the time, leaving no historical record of any of that.