Toto

aa: it's never clear if you are asking a real question, or if you are trying to expose what you think is some fatal flaw.

But in any case, the "churches" that Paul wrote to were house churches (according to the standard history.) They were groups of believers who met in someone's house. (There are current groups of Christians in the US who are trying to revive this practice.) With such a smalll number of people, there is little structure needed, only a host or hostess who provides some bread and wine.

Early Christians read the Jewish scriptures as their holy scriptures.

The standard Eusebian history says that the disciples of Jesus spread out and preached the gospel, so these house churches would have been led by people who had heard the disciples preach. The mythicist counter hyposthesis is that a movement of Messianic Jews preached a mythical Savior that they derived from reading the Hebrew scriptures.

dog-on

...or a group of Roman/Greeks mystics came up with a ransomee, while a later group of Roman/Greek Messianic Jew Wannabees saw something in the LXX that got their attention...

aa5874

But the author of Acts contradicts the 'small number' theory. Just within Acts ch2 and ch4, according to the author, there was about 8,000 new converts, of which 3000 were added in one day.

And it is not likely they met in houses, since the author of Acts claimed they sold all their possesions, including land and house.

The author of Acts depicted a large mass of thousands of followers that have become landless without any permanent place of abode.

Acts 2.41, Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there was added unto them about three thousand souls

Acts 4.4, 'Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.

Acts 4.34, 'Neither was there any among them that lacked: [b]for as many as were possessors of lands and houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold.

Toto

The author of Acts was writing political propaganda, not history. These numbers are just not reliable - in fact, few of the numbers in the Holy Scripture are reliable, and were probably not even meant to be taken literally. Acts is not a reliable source of early Christian history in general.

So what is your question? Why do you keep trying to find history in Acts and acting surprised when it doesn't make any sense? It was never meant to make sense at that level.

aa5874

You seem to miss the point. If it can be established that the book called Acts is not history then all references to the Churches are likely to be false, either in chronology or reality. And if this so, that is Acts is fiction, then Paul probably did not travel to any Churches at all, neither at Corinth, Thessalonica, Antioch, Galatia, Ephesus, Colosse or any other region and he likely did not write any epistles at all or in the 1st century.

My question concerns the dating of the Epistles. If Acts is not history, when were the Epistles written?

Toto

No, that is my point. There is no good way of dating the Epistles. Marcion published his version around 120, so they were probably written by that point. The orthodox church denounced him for subtracting from the letters, but did not claim that he wrote them all, so it seems highly probable that there was a person named Paul who had enough stature that later Christians either saved his letters or wrote letters under his name (saying what he would have said, of course).

And we learn from those letters that Paul traveled and wrote to congregations. But we don't know exactly when. We don't know if he ever called himself a Christian - perhaps not.

We can infer that the early church was small. Paul mentions names, but does not seem to assume a large hierarchy. And small house churches would fit in with other available evidence, as there is a lack of any archeological evidence of Christian churches until the late 3rd century, while Christians are mentioned by the early 2nd century.

aa5874

Since we don't know anything, perhaps fiction is viable option. Maybe he wasn't a Christian, maybe he wasn't named Paul, maybe there was no house with a church in the 1st century.

So many unanswered questions.

Toto

So what is your purpose?

You could want to understand the growth of new religions, or the historical process by which Christianity became a dominant religion in the Roman Empire. If that is the case, you can explore different assumptions and see what they lead to. If Christianity was such a major movement in the 4th century, how did it get there? How much forgery was there, versus mere spin doctoring or creative embellishment?

OR

You could want to debate evangelicals or Christian apologists as to the historical validity of their religion. In that case, you probably want to stick to a story line as close to the standard version as possible, in order to keep your message simple and not throw too much at them at once. In that case, you might as well say that Paul wrote in the middle of the first century to various churches, etc. You can agree with most of the standard Christian narrative without agreeing that there is any higher truth to the religion, and you can focus on the real weaknesses of their religion without asking them to bite off more than they can chew.

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

In a post I mentioned the state of diversity in Latin gospels that he found in 383.

"There are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies,"

Twenty years later, Jerome was kind enough to inform us (or at least his friend Augustine) of the state of Old Testament text in Churches circa 403


Jerome to Augustine. 404 C.E. (http://www.bible-researcher.com/vulgate2.html)
... you ask why a former translation which I made of some of the canonical books was carefully marked with asterisks and obelisks, whereas I afterwards published a translation without these. You must pardon my saying that you seem to me not to understand the matter: for the former translation is from the Septuagint; and wherever obelisks are placed, they are designed to indicate that the Seventy have said more than is found in the Hebrew. But the asterisks indicate what has been added by Origen from the version of Theodotion. In that version I was translating from the Greek: but in the later version, translating from the Hebrew itself, I have expressed what I understood it to mean, being careful to preserve rather the exact sense than the order of the words. I am surprised that you do not read the books of the Seventy translators in the genuine form in which they were originally given to the world, but as they have been corrected, or rather corrupted, by Origen, with his obelisks and asterisks; and that you refuse to follow the translation, however feeble, which has been given by a Christian man, especially seeing that Origen borrowed the things which he has added from the edition of a man who, after the passion of Christ, was a Jew and a blasphemer. Do you wish to be a true admirer and partisan of the Seventy translators? Then do not read what you find under the asterisks; rather erase them from the volumes, that you may approve yourself indeed a follower of the ancients. If, however, you do this, you will be compelled to find fault with all the libraries of the Churches; for you will scarcely find more than one manuscript here and there which has not these interpolations.

Jerome is saying that almost all of the Old Testament books in Roman Churches that he had seen were derived from Origen's work on them. Jerome was nearly 60 when he wrote this and had traveled extensively through the Roman World. Thus it appears that virtually all the old testament books in the Churches circa 400 C.E. had spread from Origen's hand in Alexandria post 240 C.E.+- 10 years
(whenever Origen did his work). Curious, isn't it?

This suggests to me that there was little or no transmission and preservation of Old Testament books prior to the mid-Third century at the earliest.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay




[QUOTE=PhilosopherJay;4718313]Hi DC,

Thanks for these points. The statement found in Irenaeus certainly involves hyperbole and should not be taken as the actual historical state of affairs.

We have to look elsewhere for clues to this. For example, in discussing his translation of the gospels into Latin, Jerome, writing in 383, says: [http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3002.htm]

For if we are to pin our faith to the Latin texts, it is for our opponents to tell us which; for there are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies. If, on the other hand, we are to glean the truth from a comparison of many, why not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and, further, all that has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake?

This is an amazingly honest description of the state of the Gospels in Latin. The phase "There are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies," seems to indicate that the Church up to this time had no procedure in place for assuring that accurate copies of Latin texts were made. If there had been any procedure in place, Jerome could have found the officially sanctioned copies even if they represented only, let us say, 10% of 50 copies he could find. He could have easily updated the Latin in these. However, he could not even find a few copies which were similar enough to do this. Instead he had to go back to Greek copies. But if there were no procedures in place to assure quality control in Latin copies, why should we assume there were any better quality control in Greek copies?

He claims that he "revised by a comparison of the Greek manuscripts. Only early ones have been used." First, this implies that there were discrepancies between the later copies of the gospels and the earlier ones. There discrepancies were numerous enough that he could not trust them to be the basis for a translation into Latin. Second, it is unfortunate that Jerome does not tell us where or when these early Greek copies were from or how he obtained them. There is no reason to assume that he was using actually early copies. It could well have been that they were early Fourth century copies circa 320 as opposed to later Fourth century copies circa 360.

We have no reason to suppose that the gospels did not freely circulate and change before the Fourth century.

In support of this we can look at the words of Origen, (book 5 Commentaries on John):

But he who was made fit to be a minister of the New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, Paul, who fulfilled the Gospel from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, did not write epistles to all the churches he taught, and to those to whom he did write he sent no more than a few lines. And Peter, on whom the Church of Christ is built, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail left only one epistle of acknowledged genuineness. Suppose we allow that he left a second; for this is doubtful. What are we to say of him who leaned on Jesus' breast, namely, John, who left one Gospel, though confessing that he could make so many that the world would not contain them? But he wrote also the Apocalypse, being commanded to be silent and not to write the voices of the seven thunders. But he also left an epistle of very few lines. Suppose also a second and a third, since not all pronounce these to be genuine; but the two together do not amount to a hundred lines.


At best we can say that Origen circa 250, accepted much shorter versions of Paul's letters (He describes them as being "a few lines") than we now possess. He describes the letter of Jude in Commentaries on Matthew as also being "a few lines". Jude is 25 lines, so we may assume that all the letters of Paul that he was familiar with were similarly around 25 lines. He knows one authentic letter by Peter, one authentic letter by John. He never suggests that these letters are part of a specific church canon.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

I don't think this follows. For example, "Tom Sawyer" is known to be fiction. But that doesn't imply that every location it mentions, every event, etc. is fiction. Most fictional works build on reality rather than replacing it.

Acts may very well be fictional, but that doesn't imply that the churches are as well.