dog-on

Epistles and Luke (ur-luke) are Marcionite.

Acts written later along with the revisions of both Luke and the Epistles.

Problem solved.

matthewthomas

Hi,
I'm interested in this liguistic analysis, but know little about it. Does anyone know a a good desciption/discussion of it?
In reference to PJay's hypothesis, and other suggestions I have heard that Acts is a multi-author work, is it possible to do this liguistic analysis on parts of Acts, compared to Luke (or some parts of Acts compared to others, not withstanding the problems of where to make any cuts between sections, of course), or would the sections become too small for the analysis to be meaningful?


Thanks,
Matthew

aa5874

Our problems just began, since this may mean the Epistles were tampered with so we don't really know what was written originally and when this was done.

Toto

Yes, this is the state of affairs. We don't know what was written originally, or when. Nevertheless, there are people who try to use whatever clues are available to make sense of the evidence.

You can judge for yourself how successful this is, or you can declare that the whole enterprise is futile. But please stop feigning surprise that there are contradictions, gaps, improbabilities, etc.

aa5874

I am genuinely surprised that the NT, not only the Epistles, seems to be bogus. I have been taught since childhood that it represented some type of God with a Son. What a surprise!

spamandham

Like it or not, that's the standard we have to deal with. That's one of the things that makes the problem so difficult. We might date parts of an epistle to the first century, and certain other parts to the second, or maybe even later.

aa5874

Plus, there is the additional problem of trying to figure out, even if the epistle can be dated, if words were deleted or added to give a total different meaning to the texts.

For example, in the Epistles, I did a word check of the words 'Jesus', 'Christ' and 'Jesus Christ' and have found that the word 'Jesus' is almost always as a qualifier for 'Christ', that is, the verses have either 'Jesus Christ or 'Christ Jesus', about 183 times.

Now, it occured to me if the word 'Jesus' is removed, the Epistles would still maintain it's doctrine but the authors would then probably be Marcionites.

mountainman

That would imply the interpolator of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 11.3
should have mentioned Marcionites. In terms of dating,
Marcus came to power at the time when the purportedly
existent Marcionites should have been flourishing.

Were early christian writers patronised --- like most other
writers in antiquity ---- by sponsors? Do we know?


Best wishes,


Pete

Doug Shaver

It is very unlikely that any of the documents were considered sacred scripture when they were first written. They came to be considered sacred only after they had been in circulation for many years.

aa5874

Maybe another approach into pinning down the time of writing of the Epistles is to look at the Early Church structure in the 1st century, if there was one at all.

The Paul of the Epistles is said to have wrote to 7 chuches in the 1st century, but oddly I have nothing about the leaders of these Churches. Who was the 'Pope' or Overseer of all these Churches and what were the names of the leaders of these individual assemblies.

What divine texts or scriptures were these churches using before the Epistles, bearing in mind that each church had only one epistle written to them, except those at Corinth and the Thessalonians.

Just going backwards, Joseph Smith of the Mormons developed his divine texts at the inception of Mormonism, the very first Church was structured around the divine sciptures according to J Smith, the scriptures he received from the Lord through the angel, Moroni, via some golden plates. There were no Mormon Churches scattered throughout America that were already established before Joseph Smith and were waiting for epistles from him.

So, what divine texts were these establshed Christian Churches in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch and other places using prior to the letter from ePaul and to whom were these divine scriptures revealed? There must have been some singular spiritual leader that received divine revelation and scriptures in order to establish the Christian Church in the first place, whether or not they received a letter from ePaul.

Is there anyone with a chronology of the development of the Early Church before ePaul?