Duvduv

aa5874, it's a test of my patience not to see your response(s) to my question regarding Acts and the epistles. ;-)

aa5874

Right now I am dealing with the unsubstantiated claims by Toto.

Examine an excerpt from post #108 from Toto.

Toto should should have known in advanced of posting that the author of Luke and the author of Acts made ZERO mention of any Epistles under the name of Paul.

This is quite disturbing to me personally because it comes from a person who has been posting for years..

In Acts of the Apostles it is actually the Reverse.

It was the Church of Jerusalem that GAVE the PAUL faction letters in Acts of the Apostles which they delivered.

Amazingly Paul did NOT write a single letter in Acts.

The author of Acts even mentioned the Contents of a Letter from the Jerusalem Church.

Acts 15 The author of Acts wrote the Contents of the supposed letters from the JERUSALEM church and Never STATED anywhere at all that Paul wrote any letters when he Traveled with Paul ALL over the Roman Empire.

There is NO statement in Acts of the Apostles that the author opposed Pauline Epistles because there is NO statement that Pauline wrote any.

It was the Jerusalem Church that wrote letters and gave to the Paul faction to be delivered by hand.

Toto

If you want to say that there were major changes in Christianity in the fourth century, no one would disagree very strongly.

But if you want to say that Christianity was invented out of whole cloth in the fourth century with no existing precedents, you are claiming something that is highly unlikely and so much at odds with the evidence that no one will take anything you say seriously after that.

Duvduv

No, I wouldn't go so far as saying it was totally invented in the 4th century. "Somethings" existed before that. I have made the point that even if Acts appeared on the scene as the FIRST text, the ideas it reflects didn't just appear out of thin air, and people with the names involved presumably existed previously.
But again, isn't it safe to say that if substantial and substantive revisions had been going on in texts that have not survived, what "Christianity" was originally is utterly impossible to to determine?

At least had someone found a text that said that "Paul" wrote only 3 letters to Galatians and 1 letter to Athenians, there would be reason to assume things were changing. But it didn't work out like that, and nothing seems to have been "saved" in the form we have it now. I remain convinced that the set of letters were all written as a single set sometime and distributed that way, and the idea that they were actually written individually to the towns mentioned is false.

Galatians was NEVER written actually to Galatians, and Ephesians was never actually written to Ephesus. They may have been didactic tools for religious purposes of the sect(s) they represented at the time and were distributed around. That's why they are always mentioned in a set and are complete.

And Acts and the epistles emerging separately.

But perhaps they were based on something, some ideas circulating much earlier. Same goes for the gospels. However, I still believe that the gospels originally emerged from different places, certain ones "improving or correcting" on the previous one.

aa5874

Your claim is unsubstantiated.

In Acts of the Apostles itself it is claimed that the author himself ACCOMPANIED Paul and Prayed with him when they supposedly traveled all over the Roman Empire.

Acts 21:5 KJV The author of gLuke was PART of the PAUL Faction. They PRAYED together on TOUR.

It is just baseless that it was Irenaeus who invented the idea that Acts was written by a companion of Paul.

sotto voce

Nothing could be more contrary to the recognised facts of history. In the words of one well-read historian— in the view of many, euphemistically understated— the church was 'fatefully compromised' by Constantine. He never had the least intention of instituting Christianity, but rather of retaining his empire's paganisms under another name. The view of each and every Reformer was that the compromise had been fatal, and by their day the church had long since disappeared. So it's a pov that must turn a blind eye to to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the long liberalisation that followed WW1, and to current events.

The Milvian Bridge for a millennium led to the eventual total reversal of the beliefs and praxis of the church, but that combination became so socially and politically toxic that the long (and at first, bloody) process of changing them back again was begun. Christians today quite possibly meet, more often than not, as the first church met; in private dwellings, with no trace of the formal, priest-centred religion of Constantine and Theodosius.

It's very easy to ascribe too much importance to Constantinianism, or to imagine it as more successful than it was. Europe was sparsely populated, ravaged by famine, disease and invasions; even the aristocracy was often uneducated and lived in conditions that were primitive in comparison to the elites of other continents. One could even say that Europe had ceased to be civilised while a totally imaginary 'papacy' was on hire to everywhere create retrogression, an unprecedented level of ignorance and superstition, that few moderns today can get their minds around. The hopelessly worldly, venal, self-serving 'church' was a 'tin pot' outfit, hardly worth the attention of modern minds. Certainly, it is nothing at all to be proud of, the antithesis of Christian values.

aa5874

If Nothing there should be taken at face value then how can you stick your neck out and say there is no reason to think that Acts was written Before the Pauline writings?

1. There is NOTHING that can be taken at face value in the Pauline writings.

2. There is NO non-apologetic corroboration for the Pauline writer.

3. The only book with the supposed history of Paul claimed he was Given Epistles by the Church of JERUSALEM to be hand delievered.

4. The author of Acts did NOT claim Paul wrote any Epistle to any Church on the "WE" tours from Acts 16 to Acts 21.

It is most mind-boggling to me that people who are aware that the Pauline writings cannot be taken at face value also make claims that REQUIRE that the same Pauline writings be ACCEPTED at FACE VALUE and WITHOUT corroboration.

If it can't be taken at Face Value that Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee and the Tribe of Benjamin then how can the Pauline writer be ever Identified?

Duvduv

Although it all sounds like so much heresiologist/apologist propaganda concerning Constantine, it seems to be the case that the birth of the Byzantine Empire needed to hang their hats on someone famous who made some big changes, i.e. Constantine.

Wasn't it Justinian who in the SIXTH century worried that the empire was falling apart because of all sorts of emerging religious trends and so he set his foot down on behalf of Christianity as we know it? However, the ball got rolling by the end of the 4th century, in comes Theodosius and others, and everything could be hanged on good old Constantine.....

Toto

Acts was far from the first text. Why do you keep writing this as a possibility? The idea makes no sense.

"Utterly" is going too far. It is impossible to be very sure about what happened, but people who study the area have some idea about what Christianity was like.
This is a reasonable idea that has a lot of support, and Robert Price will be publishing a book on Paul that should be out this year.

Duvduv

If someone attached the Acts story to GLuke yet the authors of the epistles didn't know Acts then it means that they didn't know GLuke either as it is clear that they didn't know the gospel stories.
This would suggest that both the epistles and Acts emerged before the gospels and Acts before the epistles.Unless they emerged at the same time but unknown to one another in different locations.
Because otherwise it would have to be explained why the epistles don't reflect a number of elements from Acts if the epistle writers did know about Acts.

I have mentioned that I am not convinced that the writer of Acts had an agenda against the Paul of the epistles as Toto believes to be the case.