Diogenes the Cynic

What do any of those quotes have to do with Acts? paul mentions a guy named Luke, so therefore that guy must have written Acts? What kind of logic is that?

Luke-Acts is too late to have been written by a companion of Paul and the author never makes any such claim anyway.

hallq

Praxeus - I'm with Diogenes on those passages, and most of the letters you cite are of disputed authorship.

On the other hand, I'm not sure Luke-Acts is too late to have been written by a companion of Paul. He was executed in the 60s, and those books were written in the 80s. Compare to Socrates/Plato: Socrates was executed when Plato was 28 or so, and Plato lived to be 80. The author of Acts could have been 50 when Paul died and lived to write his books.

Diogenes the Cynic

Luke knows Josephus. That puts him into the mid 90's at a minimum. Acts is probably 2nd century.

Steven Avery

:rolling: .. to a mythicist every letter, gospel, book is of disputed authorship

Proof ? Or are you just quoting a theory as a fact.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Vorkosigan

Mainstream scholarship, not mythicists, says Colossians and 2 Tim are not from the hand of Paul. Only a few religious conservatives argue differently, and their position is determined by religion, not methodology, evidence, and argument.

Acts is a second century document, and is written in the style common to Greek fiction of the era, which was full of shipwrecks, crowds, trials, public disputations, and so on. The "we" passages are most likely a fiction of the author, created using a periplus. The author was literate in the Greek classics, and was a polished writer and user of Greek dramatic and fiction conventions.

I covered all this a while back in another thread and gave a short exegesis of the novel as a piece of Greek fiction, but I can't find it now. Does anyone remember what thread that was???

Vorkosigan

Steven Avery

Again, if you have a survey, that would be fine to see.

There are quite a number of folks who give a compelling defence of Pauline authorship of the Pastorals, and to many the arguments against Colossians and other non-pastorals are very weak.

However as in all these discussions, we run into the same problem again and again. The mythicist uses "mainstream scholarship" (whatever that is, and whatever presups they must have, to be likely accepted and published in academia) as their apologetic when convenient, and then rail against "mainstream scholarship" or simply ignore it, when they want to make other arugments, such as the gospels being fiction or Acts being written in the 2nd century. "Mainstream scholarship" simply becomes a diversion of convenience, one used to avoid the actual scholastic tension between those who accept the Gospel accounts as true and those who would try to paint them as fiction.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

hallq

What indication do we have that Luke knew Josephus?

If anyone knows of a book giving fairly detailed treatment to authorship/dating questions from a mainstream or neutral perspective, please tell me.

Amaleq13

Would that be Chris Price: Genre, Historicity, Date, and Authorship of Acts?

Amaleq13

If you haven't read it, this article by Richard Carrier is a good place to start. You'll find references at the end.

Doug Shaver

Fair enough, if all we're doing is arguing from authority. So, what evidence do you know about that, in your judgment, ought settle any dispute about who wrote the pastorals? Never mind how many authorities agree about what the evidence proves. Exactly what is the evidence that *you* think proves, beyond reasonable doubt, that Paul wrote the pastorals?