Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
I already addessed your concerns in my previous posting. gLuke and Acts are two different stand alone books covering different people & things. They don't have to go together. One can like one and reject (or ignore) the other, more so if the other one has a controversial Paul with his unchecked revelations from above and inspired by Spirits, and a whole bunch of largely unnamed non-eyewitness Greeks preaching the Christian message outside of Jerusalem.
I think you are trying to make something out of nothing.

Duvduv

I also agree that the two are stand alone, and that someone connected them with the first lines of Acts. As you know the scholarly mainstream accepts that they are two books of one set. I think Chrysostom presents a big problem for that theory that is held as "gospel truth." However, your explanation about Christians "not being interested in Acts" doesn't make sense because of the allegedly early writings of the propagandists such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen etc. who discussed Acts very normally as if it were a given way back in the 2nd century.

So if Acts was not a given at all until the days of Chrysostom, the Great Salesman, then something is fishy in Denmark about all these so-called early heresiologists.

Chili

He was a 'creation' as the cloak of Peter, designed cameleon in color and slippery as a fish under water to attract mermaids and beachboys and left beachbums and bummers in its wake.

Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
That probably describes the situation only in Chrysostom's community at the time, not necessarily all over Christiandom. Chrysostom could hardly make a survey of the popularity of Acts all over the Roman empire. And if Acts was little known in Chrysostom's domain, that's because local preachers were not using it in their sermons, not because the book was unavailable. More so if the first complete Codex were widely distributed at the time, which is probably the case.

Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
Here is a list of "fathers" who quoted Acts in their works, from mid 3rd century to Chrysostom's times:
Cyprian 245-258 (as a Christian), Lactantius 240-320, Eusebius 263-339, Pacian 310-391, Ambrose 340-397, Chrysostom 347-407 (for reference), Jerome 347-420, Augustine 354-430

Duvduv

Isn't Augustine often considered the real creator of Christianity as we know it?
It's rather interesting that Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine were all contemporaries.

andrewcriddle

Chrysostom Homilies gives as a footnote this passage from Chrysostom on Acts which may explain his meaning.

Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
Ya, but Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of A, Cyprian, Lactantius and Eusebius were not contemporaries of Chrystosom or Augustine. And also, the Codexes Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were published earlier.
A lot of Christianity was created before Augustine.

Duvduv

We might have deduct Irenaeus, Origen and Tertullian and Clement from being "before them"....

Duvduv

It is interesting that in this section Chrysostom indicates that the author writing to Theophilus is the same as the author of the gospel, yet unlike Acts, he doesn't suggest that the gospel was in hiding. If that is so, then how does he know that the introductory sentence in Acts is even authentic?

Acts is in hiding, is PART OF A CANON since earliest times, and yet the other book IS easily used. Some "neglect" this book of their sacred canon while others don't take it seriously, written under the Holy Spirit (!) by THE AUTHOR OF A "HOLY GOSPEL", and he doesn't condemn them but only offers mild criticism about whomever he is talking about.

St. Chrys. had made the same complaint at Antioch in the Homilies (a.d. 387) in Principium Actorum, etc. t. iii. p. 54. “We are about to set before you a strange and new dish.…strange, I say, and not strange. Not strange; for it belongs to the order of Holy Scripture: and yet strange; because peradventure your ears are not accustomed to such a subject. Certainly, there are many to whom this Book is not even known (πολλοῖς γοῦν τὸ βιβλίον τοῦτο οὐδὲ γνώριμόν ἐστι) and many again think it so plain, that they slight it: thus to some men their knowledge, to some their ignorance, is the cause of their neglect……We are to enquire then who wrote it, and when, and on what subject: and why it is ordered (νενομοθέτηται) to be read at this festival. For peradventure you do not hear this Book read [at other times] from year’s end to year’s end.”