PhilosopherJay

According to the synoptics, Jesus was with Peter and the Apostles for a year and according to the gospel of John for three years. Acts tells us further that he was with them for 40 days after he died. One would expect him to teach a lot in this time, but in Acts we see that Jesus taught absolutely nothing to the Apostles. We find no teaching of Jesus in any of the 28 chapters. In this book, the resurrected Jesus simply commands them to wait in Jerusalem and made some predictions: 1) the apostles would be baptized with the holy spirit and receive magical powers and 2) that they would be witnesses for Jesus "to the ends of the Earth."

this is the beginning of Acts 1:

That's it. Acts doesn't reveal anything else that Jesus said besides this single command to wait in Jerusalem for a few days, and these predictions of magical powers from the Holy Spirit and the Apostles will act as witnesses.

As far as waiting in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, this contradicts the gospel of John:

Here Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit and it involves just the power to forgive sins or not. In Acts, the father God, not Jesus, gives them the Holy Spirit and it involves the power to speak in tongues, and to heal the sick and dead.

In either case, there are no teachings revealed. Presumably the father could have given the apostles the holy spirit without the appearance of Jesus on Earth.

Here is the description of the Holy Spirit coming to the Apostles:

Since almost everybody in Jerusalem spoke Greek or Aramaic, it is hard to see why this power to speak other languages should be necessary and apparently it didn't impress everyone as the author notes, "Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

The apostles, or at least Peter, then witnesses for Jesus:

Note that there is nothing about Jesus being a son of God here and nothing about him teaching anything. According to this story, Jesus was a man who did miracles with the power of God. God deliberately had the Israelites crucify him and then raised him from the dead. End of story. According to the writer of Acts, using Peter as his narrator, God did miracles through a man named Jesus, The Jews and wicked people crucified him, and God raised him from the dead.

There is nothing about Jesus teaching anything here. He is a character in the little story, along with God, the Jews and some "wicked people". It is the writer of the text who teaches by telling the tale through the voice of Peter. He records no teachings of Jesus and acknowledges only that Jesus was a man used by God.

Being with them for a year or three years and 40 days, one would have suspected that Jesus might have told the Apostles some basic things like it was okay for Jews to eat with gentiles or it was okay for gentiles to be baptized. But even here, Peter has to rely on a revelation from God for the first and some deductive reasoning to figure out the second. Here is the revelation.

It is God who teaches Peter that it is okay to kill and eat meat, not Jesus. (We may assume that Peter was from the vegetarian Essene cult)

Here is the deduction that Peter makes directly after this, that it is okay to baptize gentiles:

When the Holy Spirit first came to Peter, he was able to speak somehow in a foreign language. Apparently these men were speaking in a foreign language and therefore Peter deduced that they had the Holy Spirit. Since God had given both gentiles and Jews the Holy Spirit, Peter deduces that he should baptize them.

The important thing is that neither the writer of the text or Peter his lead character indicates that Jesus said that Baptism of gentiles was okay or not okay. The author does not rely on the teachings of Jesus, but only on revelation from God to propose and/or explain the custom of non-Jews beings baptized.

In the entire 28 chapters of Acts, there is only one quote from something Jesus said in the gospels. In Acts 20, Paul finishes his goodbye to the Elders of the Church of Ephesus this way:

Unfortunately, these words are not in any of the gospels. Thus "Acts," in all its 28 chapters, does not show the apostles ever quoting any teaching of Jesus that we find in the gospels. Apparently the apostles were able to convert people from Jerusalem to Rome without using any of the sayings or teachings from Jesus that we find in the gospels.

One has to wonder why all the sayings and gospel teachings are ignored by the apostles. It is possible that the writer of Acts just had the bare bones story of a crucified miracle worker to work from when it was written. Since that was the only thing known, that is the only thing really about Jesus of Nazareth in the main text. It can be supposed that Chapter 1 of Acts was written last, after the rest of Acts, by someone trying to make a bridge between Acts and the Gospels although it originally had nothing to do with the gospels.

In this scenario, we have the genre of apostle stories and Jesus begins as just another story in that genre. When a number of Jesus stories become popular, an editor tries linking together some old Peter and Paul apostle stories and then adds chapter one to Acts to link it to the popular new Jesus stories.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay,

This seems to tie in well with the fact that many of the gnostic texts feature the resurrected Jesus being asked, and answering, stacks of questions from the apostles. In The Letter of Peter to Philip, when asked by the apostles to appear and answer questions, Jesus replies, out of lightning and thunder above the Mount of Olives .... "Why are you asking me"?

The lack of teaching might reflect on the apostles. Were they astute enough to learn or were they boneheads? The Gnostic texts invariably step on the bonehead side of the line. So maybe Jesus had a tough assignment teaching this bunch anything much while he was alive. Thus Acts is devoid of teaching, and much of the teaching was conducted at post resurrection seminars.

Best wishes,


Pete

avi

Thank you Jay, well written, as always.
A very enjoyable read, too, I must acknowledge. Thanks for teaching me.

Again, this is very well done, for a bloke like me hasn't a clue how to differentiate these ancient texts.

Well, Jay, as you know, I am most probably in error here, having perhaps partaken a tad too much wine myself, but, may I ask a further question here: What about LATIN? In other words, I would be surprised if, in the second century, around or shortly after the third Jewish Roman war, no one spoke Latin in Jerusalem. Ditto for a few other languages--, after all this is one of the three major metropolises between Damascus and Alexandria, two thousand years ago: Hebrew, Ge'ez, Syriac, Coptic, Turkish (Lydian), and middle Persian. In other words, I don't find this notion of speaking in many other languages in the cosmopolitan Jerusalem to be inappropriate, or misplaced.... Maybe I am wrong, and the idea that folks living in Jerusalem at that time spoke only Greek and Aramaic, is correct.

I have no data to support my supposition....

cheers,
avi

James Brown

If Jesus taught the disciples the gospel for three years so that they can teach the nations, then why were the disciples so clueless when Jesus said, "Okay, it's time for me to go die now"?

stephan huller

What is even more curious is the lack of knowledge of the Apostolikon (the so-called writings of Paul) which were originally used by the Marcionites (and Clement of Alexandria) took as a commentary on the gospel

I take this as a sign that the Catholic tradition COULDN`T put forward BOTH a fake historical text AND a fake interperation of the NT. Acts was put forward as only one part of a Catholic revaluation of all values

Juststeve

I find nothing in the least bit remarkable about the lack of Jesus’ teachings in the book of Acts. Luke had already addressed Jesus’ teachings. The book is addressed to the same Theophilus that his Gospel was addressed to, and reminds him that in his earlier work he described Jesus’ teachings. Perhaps he didn’t see the need to be so redundant as to rehash the teaching for the second time. Why would anyone expect him to?

Steve

stephan huller

I am not at all convinced that “Luke” wrote the preamble at the beginning of Luke or Acts

Sheshbazzar

The composition was likely the work of one of the many "Luke's" :devil1:

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

Good point, the Gnostic text are filled with wonderful and fantastic things that Jesus tells his followers. Acts is totally anticlimactic in this respect. If someone comes back from the dead, you would at least expect him/her to say something about their death experience – there was a white light or my life flashed before my eyes, or I was floating out of my body. Instead, Jesus just tells the apostles to wait in Jerusalem, get the holy spirit and be witnesses. It seems he could have told them this on day one and didn’t have to wait until he was dead to tell them. I mean if this was all he had to say, he could have just written it in a last will and testament.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Avi,

I kind of imagine the situation was pretty much like in the United States today. There are many languages spoken, but pretty much if you know English and Spanish you can speak with almost everybody because 98% of the people speak either English or Spanish. I think there were probably a dozen different languages spoken in the middle East, but probably 98% of the people spoke either Aramaic or Greek as either a first or second language.